Seattle chef Brendan McGill closes downtown restaurants after 10 years, says city ‘slid into irrelevance’

Acclaimed Seattle chef Brendan McGill is closing the book on a decade of restaurants at downtown’s Exchange Building, sharing a raw, emotional farewell on social media that mourns both his shuttered spaces and the slow unraveling of the city’s central business district.

McGill, owner of Hitchcock Restaurant Group, closed Café Hitchcock and Oyster Cellar at the base of the Exchange Building on May 31, ending a 10-year run that began with packed lunch rushes and ended with empty sidewalks.

“Three years of building and opening beautiful, rewarding spaces, a couple years of deep uncertainty, then a long, gradual decline that I simply refused to believe wouldn’t turn around,” McGill wrote in a Facebook post this week.

In the early years, McGill said, the restaurants thrived on a steady stream of office workers who “diligently burst through the halls of the building before 7 a.m. every morning.” Demand was strong enough that he expanded into the building’s Second Avenue corner, opening an express café in a former Tully’s Coffee space.

The momentum continued when EQ Office bought the building. McGill said the company’s CEO wanted to revamp the corner with “an exquisite bar and tenant amenity space,” and the new concept opened in September 2019.

“My dreams had come true, taking our company from a tiny storefront on Bainbridge Island to the intersection of wealth and power,” McGill wrote. “Everything was working as we’d intended.”

Pandemic hollowed out downtown, Seattle chef says

Six months later, the pandemic hit.

“Lockdowns. No return to office. The tenants left,” McGill wrote. “The central business district of Seattle continued to slide into irrelevance. At long last, our stores were the only open business within blocks.”

He said even loyal customers stopped coming, telling him, “We just hate coming downtown.”

McGill recalled betting on the location because of its history.

“First Avenue, downtown Seattle, is never going out of style,” he remembered telling himself. “For 100 years, there has been a walking viaduct from the ferry cresting a three-way intersection that would never not make sense.”

“Life has a funny way of teaching a lesson,” he wrote. “The rest of the story is honestly just too painful to get into.”

McGill told The Puget Sound Business Journal this week that Seattle is no longer a “no-brainer” for restaurateurs, pointing to Bellevue, Tacoma, Edmonds, Spokane, and Boise, Idaho, as more attractive markets.

He will continue to operate three restaurants on Bainbridge Island — Café Hitchcock, Bruciato, and the newly revamped Kingfisher — along with a new wholesale company.

“Thanks for 10 years of making memories, feeding the people, and never giving up until the bitter end,” he wrote. “RIP Oyster Cellar, Café Hitchcock, Bar Taglio/Solea.”

Manda Factor is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. Follow Manda on X and email her here. 

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