This handsome kitchen, nicely staged for the grand opening of Urban Enoteca, originally provided the venue for Chef Jason Wilson's carefully modulated menu (since passed along to Chris Opsata): an uncomplicated array of salads, cheeses and charcuterie, a few straightforward mains like scallops and pasta. Leslie Kelly wrote admiringly of Opsata's skills two years ago, but those skills weren't enough to bring in customers. Part of the problem was the awkward location adjacent to a railroad overpass along First Avenue South, almost three miles from downtown. Not much drop-in, after-work traffic, which was a shame because the food was pretty good for a wine bar, and the wine selection (Betz, Cave B, Jones of Washington) was unusually high for a laid-back eatery.
But the place was only open to the public three evenings a week, and it never clicked as a real restaurant. At 22,000 square feet, it was gi-normous, much easier to configure as a venue for corporate events, which was the original intention, as Cornichon wrote when it opened, in December, 2010.
So now the other shoe has dropped, and owner Terry Thompson wrote to his subscribers that his foray into the restaurant biz will close on Saturday so that he can concentrate on the event-management business.
It's not going to be easy, though. Over the last two or three years, SoDo has turned into a hotbed of similar event spaces, however. At least four spacious music venues (Showbox, Club Sur, Club X, Sodo Pop) will gladly make a deal, as will catering venues such as Herban Feast (also known as SoDo Park), Within Sodo and Georgetown Ballroom, not to mention what's still being called the WaMu Theater at the Clink. Marketing a private event space requires a whole different mentality than running a restaurant; the audience is smaller (Seattle doesn't have that many professional MICE (Meeting, Incentive, Convention & Events), after all. Getting them to nibble the cheese, that's the hard part.
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