Get your kelp Caesar salads while you can: Seabird, the Bainbridge Island seafood standout from local restaurateur Brendan McGill is closing after service on September 28, the Seattle Times reports.
When it opened in 2022, Seabird snagged practically every award under the sun. It earned an Eater Seattle Award and Bon Appetit put it on its list of the best new restaurants in America. McGill’s restaurant dazzled diners with its artful preparations and creative use of seaweed — a yuzu-and-koji-marinated cut of salmon came wrapped in sugar kelp, the focaccia is paired with a briny algae butter.
As time went on Seabird shed a little bit of its over-the-top presentations but maintained its high quality, serving dishes like mussels cooked with honey mead instead of white wine or wood-fired oysters sweetened with yuzu.
But McGill told the Times that Seabird’s high-end style of dining was no longer profitable during the drizzly Seattle winters, when Bainbridge gets many fewer visitors than it does in the summer.
“All our costs doubled and tripled, and the appetite to spend is just not there anymore,” the chef told the paper. “It worked great during summertime when everyone is visiting the island. But I know what will happen in November when it’s 42 degrees and rainy outside. We are just not going to see a lot of people.”
Seabird’s closure may be a blow, but McGill’s Hitchcock restaurant group is still going strong. It operates Bruciato on Bainbridge and opened the impressive Oyster Cellar in downtown Seattle last year; the casual Cafe Hitchcock has locations on Bainbridge and in Seattle.
And while Seabird is flying off into the sunset, McGill says that he’s keeping the space and will debut a new restaurant there sometime in the future.
