Behind the Scenes: Winter
Behind the Scenes: Winter
On restaurant life cycles.
I don’t know why I expect a restaurant to last forever, but I do. It doesn’t really make sense, given that restaurants are, in effect, a collection of people. And the average American life span is…what? Only 70-something now. Falling, falling.
The Seattle Times runs a column that lists restaurant closures. I dread reading it.1 Two of my favorites closed recently. One just last week: The London Plane.
How I will miss thee. Another I loved, Kedai Makan, an incredible Malaysian restaurant on a brick-lined Capitol Hill street, closed last fall.2 Will and I had a most memorable dinner there once with his childhood friend Bill Baldwin, in town for business from Baltimore. We sat and laughed for hours, drinking sweetened condensed milk in tea and licking Asian barbecue sauce from greasy fingers. Wiping wayward sesame seeds off our laps, three spoons reaching for mango sticky rice at the same time.
I learned of The London Plane’s impending closing from my bestie, Laura, not that dreaded column in the Seattle Times. In a text she said:
“London Plane is closing. Christmas Eve!!!”
“Nooooooooooooo.” was all I could reply.
Our friendship was nurtured and tended to at The London Plane. We were the flowers and the waitstaff the gardeners, elegant and poised, watering our friendship with salads, red and green; foamy lattes; bubbly mimosas; a fluffy quiche. She lives at the top of James and for the past year, I’ve lived at the bottom. The jewel of Occidental Square, The London Plane was the perfect place to meet. We sold our chocolate there for a while, too, and became business acquaintances with the owners, Katherine Anderson and Yasu Saito. Their lease was up and after 10 years plus a global pandemic, they realized they couldn’t make the numbers work anymore.
I walked Friedrich past its tall windows yesterday and felt sad. Missing the future Sundays Will and I would no longer have, sitting under the blue tarps stretched like pie slices between the London Plane trees for which the restaurant was named, drinking weekend brews with pastries that crackled when you bit in to them, leaving golden flakes all over the table tops, metal discs of mint or pink or pastel blue. Always with a little vase and flower on top.
I’m old enough now to have seen restaurants in this city come and go. They don’t last forever. They’re like fashion trends, I guess: blue jean styles that look good one year and frumpy the next (for lack of a better comparison and for the record, I think restaurants provide far more societal value and human benefit than cheap fashion).
There is no evolution without slumbers and awakenings, endings and beginnings, closings and openings, starts and finishes.
Or partying friends that helped you grow in your 20s, but hinder you in your 40s. Post-pandemic and historic civil unrest, Pioneer Square is one of the hardest hit neighborhoods of Seattle and, to be frank, The London Plane was almost offensive sitting there. A beautiful, bougie place with its imported dry goods, $7 danish and $18 salads, coiffed, manicured, and polished while a large portion of Pioneer Square’s populace relieved themselves in the margins, slept in cold rain on nearby sidewalks, ate from garbage cans, and cried out in anguish night after night. It was a place for the rich among a sea of the poor. A stark contrast between the haves and have nots. A stark contrast that could no longer hold.3
But it left a mark on this city like language marks a baby’s brain. It shaped my tastes and sensitivities, curiosities and pleasures and I will never forget it. It is now a historical part of the evolution of Seattle’s culinary scene. There is no evolution without slumbers and awakenings, endings and beginnings, closings and openings, starts and finishes.
To the people with whom I’ve shared wonderful food and conversation here on many occasions: Will, Laura, Bria, Seth, Liz, Alan, Alex, Neha, Rocky, (and Friedrich, of course) and to the people who were The London Plane: Katherine, Yasu, LB, and all the beautiful, creative, talented rest. Thanks for the love, labor, and memories. ❤
