Renee Erickson calls Bar Melusine a love letter to the flavors of the French Atlantic. There are oysters.
Renee Erickson calls Bar Melusine "a love letter to the flavors of the French Atlantic." There are oysters. Sea Creatures

Two of Renee Erickson's Three New Capitol Hill Projects Are Now Open

This week, Renee Erickson, along with Jeremy Price and Chade Dale, her partners in the company Sea Creatures, have quietly opened two new restaurants, Bar Melusine and Bateau, on Capitol Hill. Price says they are planning more of a grand opening when their third project on the same block of Union Street, General Porpoise Doughnuts, opens, which he anticipates will happen in "a week or so."

Erickson calls Bar Melusine a “love letter to the flavors of the French Atlantic in the form of an oyster bar.” Along with pristine oysters, Melusine serves raw, cooked, pickled, and smoked fish and shellfish—much of it from local waters—as well as savory buckwheat crepes and other dishes from Brittany and Normandy.

The focus at Bateau will be grass-fed beef from the 30-acre Whidbey Island farm owned by Sea Creatures. (According to Seattle Met, the partners are assembling their herd of cattle; in the meantime, Bateau's beef comes from Burke Ridge Farms in Custer, Washington). Butchered and dry-aged in house, the beef is then cooked in cast-iron skillets with butter and tallow (rendered beef fat). The menu also includes frites, local vegetables, and starters such as chicken liver pâté and veal sweetbreads.

Mollusk Is Open in South Lake Union

Cody Morris and Travis Kukull, formerly of Epic Ales and Gastropod, closed their tiny Sodo businesses in 2015 for a much bigger—and much more ambitious—brewing and restaurant operation. At Mollusk, Kukull’s imaginative, Asian-influenced menu includes prawn and squid-ink crackers with Sriracha powder, blood rice nasi goreng with geoduck, Laotian lemongrass curry, and crispy-skin black cod with rice cakes. You’ll also find a larger selection of Morris’s funky farmhouse ales and sours.

Big Mario's Pizza on Queen Anne Opens This Friday, November 6
Big Mario’s is expanding beyond Capitol Hill, bringing its very good (and very popular) pizza to Queen Anne. And just like the original location, the new Big Mario's is located next door to a Cafe Vita. The Queen Anne location, which opens for business this Friday, will be open seven days a week, from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m.