Restaurant review: Seabird was named a top national spot for 2022 — but here’s what our critic thinks

LAST MONTH, SEABIRD WAS NAMED to Esquire’s 2022 “Best New Restaurants in America,” one of 40 places nationwide to make the magazine’s 40th such annual list. I’d first set out to eat there, with high hopes and the intent to document them, this past July. This could, I thought, represent an ideal Seattle summertime day trip: the beyond picturesque ferry ride to Bainbridge, maybe an exploration of the woodsy island, then wandering quaint Winslow, capped off with what could be an exquisite local seafood dinner at the new spot from Brendan McGill’s Hitchcock Restaurant Group with chef/partner Grant Rico at the helm.

Seabird’s ambitious menu supported local fishers, farmers and foragers overtly, named on the menu in a way that should’ve stayed in favor (that chicken on “Portlandia” be damned). Meanwhile, Pacific Northwest-raised Rico boasted experience at California’s triple-Michelin-starred SingleThread. Having worked at Hitchcock before, he’d returned to do so again; then came the pandemic. After weathering the worst with pop-ups and to-go burgers, McGill and Rico landed with high aspirations on a new incarnation for the space: Seabird. Upon opening in April 2022, McGill told Seattle Met, “This is us taking the gloves off … this is us going hard again.”

My initial expedition found the updated space pleasant, with the kitchen opened up and a vaguely nautical feel — deep navy wainscoting, several kinds of pendant light fixtures, sea-related art and blond wood booths, including one that rocked, as if oceangoing, with the motion of the party on the other side. The crew was warmly welcoming and knowledgeable on all fronts. A gorgeous, glossy-green chilled local pea soup — refreshing and remarkably rich, though dairy-free — got poured tableside to surround an island of unstintingly smoked sablefish salad, the fish line-caught out of Neah Bay. The juxtaposition of fresh summertime garden and smoky sea was unexpected, interesting, elegant, excellent. 

But multiple other dishes felt flawed in serious ways: elaborately plated in a painterly, showy style with plethoras of components that, instead of resonating, ended up falling flat on the palate, compositions that tasted confusing rather than good. Errors were made — undercooked roasted carrots, halibut overcooked until seized up and dry. I ate the lion’s share of the menu on two visits, spending a pile of the newspaper’s money — Seabird’s small plates range from $13 to $31, with shareable large ones in the $50s — and came away feeling disconcerted and sad.

Back then, however, a lack of buzz was evident; reservations were very easy to come by. People were not flocking to Seabird. After much consideration and in consultation with my editor, it seemed best to let it be, at least for the time being, in favor of accentuating the positive elsewhere.

THEN, IN NOVEMBER, came the Esquire acclaim. How such lists get made is another story, but with four writers crisscrossing the country to come up with 40 places to feature in a year — certainly taste-testing more that get left on the cutting-room floor — the kind of scrutiny critics on the ground are afforded over time may not be possible. But lists are fun! People love lists. Esquire lauded not just Seabird’s seafood, but also the vegetable dishes there. Now people were excited to go to Seabird, messaging me: Had I been? How was it? Time to try it again.

The staff was still wonderful; seated there by chance again, the one booth still needed more secure mooring. A Douglas fir truffle custard, served warm — Seabird’s take on chawanmushi — seemed to glow in its small bowl. Made with chanterelles and truffles foraged in the forests of the Olympics, plus local matsutake and lobster mushrooms too, and madrone tea, braised kombu and dots of housemade pine oil, it contained silkiness, meatiness, umami and essence of the woods — it tasted magical, maybe made by elves or trees themselves, perfect for a dark and cold Northwest night.

Seabird’s naturally leavened seaweed bread — warm rolls that had been doughy, overdense and piercingly sour on a previous visit — had a delicate tang and an agreeable moist crumb. Where unpleasantly oily before, the accompanying sugar-kelp butter smoothly added both a faint sweetness and a tidal-tasting salt that approached the line of excess, then receded nicely.

From there, excess got the best of things, with expansive plates strewn with all manner of lovely ingredients insistently disagreeing with each other. At Seabird, everything is meant to share, and the server provided a sharp knife with the braised radicchio, noting that it could be difficult to cut. It was, pulling stringily apart as we awkwardly attempted to plate two portions of the bitter vegetable along with all the other elements: a salty, sour celery foam; slices of sweet, soft Packham pear; crispy-fried torpedo onion, like a superlative version of French’s canned ones; pickled mustard seed; celery oil; and more. Different tastes clashed; getting it all in one bite, no easy task, did not create any haute-cuisine harmony.

One dish out of four that Esquire praised, halibut ceviche, had been on the menu since summer, when it made a warm-weather-appropriate detour on a menu largely of local ingredients with European and Japanese techniques. Now in wintertime on Bainbridge, it seemed odd, but the pool of cool leche de tigre tasted bright and nuanced with lime, garlic, ginger and cilantro oil, with a mellow undertone that the server attributed to juiced butternut squash. But given the lake of liquid, dots of jalapeño crema and bits of red dulse were too sparse to meaningfully contribute, while wheels of jalapeño posed palate-blowing challenges. Sculptural sticks of crunchy-fried sweet potato functioned mostly as decoration; more, bigger chips would have provided a meaningful textural counterpoint to the ceviche’s soft fish and soft butternut squash. 

A main of halibut for $59 had been over-wood-fired until the flesh of the poor piece of fish was stiff, even at the center (as it also was back in July). A 6- to 7-ounce portion, it was definitely shareable, the server said (though clearly, one’s appetite mileage may vary). Again, we plated it ourselves with the limited amount of grace we could muster; again, we tried to account for why these disparate foods had landed on the same plate. Smashed amarosa potatoes had also been fired until dry and sadly devoid of any earthy tuber flavor; red kuri and spaghetti squash were ambient. A black garlic mole, rich and intense, overpowered everything, making an especially strange, aggressive mate to what should have been ocean-sweet, delicately flavored halibut.

Another large plate featured black cod ($52) that, rather than gently flaking into luxurious layers, seemed to be exuding its oils, squishing apart when forked. Its accompaniments would’ve been better with a firmer fish, in any case: a porridgey koji barley risotto, a muddy-textured carrot purée, wood-fired carrots, pine nut gremolata. Pretty curlicues of radish and apple lent crunch, but tasted strangely salty as seawater.

THE TWO DESSERTS available looked splendid and tasted like best-possible endings to a late autumn night — velvety local honey sorbet atop a crunchy-edged spoon cake made with more fabulous Packham pear; a whole baked Cosmic Crisp apple resting on a cushion of puff pastry with understatedly sweet caramel and tart crème fraîche ice cream. With exquisitely ripe fall fruit as the basis, the balance and nuance in tastes and textures felt just right, as well as too little, too late. According to a PR representative for the restaurant, chef Rico is in charge of the dessert program, too — is this his true wheelhouse? In the end, it serves as a puzzling final punctuation mark for a third baffling, disappointing evening at Seabird.