- Kelly O
- IT’S TINY Monica Dimas, Joe Ritchie, and mkt. (pretty much the whole restaurant is pictured).
The restaurant named mkt. is Ethan Stowell's seventh in Seattle—or eighth, if you count Ballard Pizza Company, or ninth, if you count his original and now-long-defunct Union, or tenth or eleventh, if you count his hamburger and crepe outlets at Safeco Field. His main half-dozen places—Tavolàta, How to Cook a Wolf, Anchovies & Olives, Staple & Fancy, Rione XIII, and Bar Cotto—are all stylish, urbane rooms serving his trademark rustic Italian. Across the board, the pasta is excellent (all made fresh, thanks to the extruder in the basement of Tavolàta), the vegetable dishes are exceptionally good, the meats and fish are very well-handled, and it all has a local/seasonal/very-well-sourced bent. Some have questioned the lack of variation—but if a man loves Italian food, and he is masterful at assembling great teams of people to make it, and by this he prospers, why should he not follow his heart (rather than, as some might, opening a Tibetan dumpling shop, a Greek place, a tavern, a bakery, a seafood place, and something pan-Asian instead)? Along the way, he was named a 2008 Best New Chef by Food & Wine, then a Best New Chef All-Star this year, and was thrice nominated for a James Beard award. And so Ethan Stowell made one restaurant after another, each more or less in the same image, and the people rejoiced as one came to their own neighborhood, and it was good.
mkt. is different. Stowell fans will know this when they see that there is only one pasta on the menu (unheard of!)...
