The Whale Wins | Seattle, WA
I fell in love with restaurants when I visited The Whale Wins. I was eleven.
In this series, I’m calling out a few of my all-time favorite restaurants — and how my experience of them has shaped me in ways both large and small. With a keen interest in the people behind each venture, I’m sharing what got the founder started and why they stayed, how the restaurant approaches sustainability across its food and design, and how each restaurant’s design details craft and enhance the dining experience.
I first fell in love with restaurants when I visited The Whale Wins. I was eleven.
I relished every detail: the sliding blue barn door that welcomes the space, the butcher paper-covered marble table tops, the stocked shelves of artisanal goods and provisions, the stacked lumber above the central Italian marble oven, the vintage kitchen sink at the corner of the space (even the striped cloth curtain beneath it), the light fixture that spelled out “HELLO HELLO.”
In every subsequent visit to The Whale Wins (of which there were quite a few!), my family and I would inevitably point out the detail we so loved about the space, adding to our list every time.
I remember hoping — dreaming, even — that my own future home would be like the light, airy, welcoming space that founder. and owner Renee Erickson and her team created with The Whale Wins. “I want a sink like that!” I’d exclaim, “And a marble oven like that one!”
Oh, and the food! The food!
Sardines on toast with curried tomato paste, shaved fennel, and chopped parsley; Sea Wolf bread and soft butter with giant flakes of salt (the best butter, I’m convinced, to exist); sherry-spiked steamed Hama Hama clams with potatoes and leeks; plates of house-pickled vegetables.
It seemed then — and now — to be not a single misstep in Renee’s The Whale Wins.
The Founding Story
Like so many of the founding stories I’ve stumbled across the past few months, Renee’s is the story of an unconventional, ever-evolving path, courage, and inspired by her childhood roots.
Renée Erickson
A native Washingtonian and Seattleite (like myself), Renee graduated from the University of Washington with a graduate degree in fine arts and plans to become an art teacher.
At age 20, she began working at Boat Street Café in Seattle, first working front of house, then moving to the back where she grew to love cooking. After staging around Europe, she returned to the Boat Street Café at age 25. When the restaurant’s owner put it up for sale, Renee bought it, though she admits she “didn’t have a clue” how to run a restaurant.
“I’ve been a chef for almost 18 years,” says Renee in an interview for Seattle Magazine, “I bought Boat Street when I was 25… I had a plan in mind of what my life was going to be like and owning a restaurant was not that!”
With courage and a sense of purpose, she hasn’t looked back since.
Today, Renee — despite not being a classically trained chef — is a James Beard award winning chef, with restaurants across Seattle, including the Ballard oyster bar The Walrus and The Carpenter, Italian cocktail bar Barnacle, sustainable steakhouse Bateau, and doughnut shop General Porpoise, amongst others. Her restaurants sit within her hospitality group, Sea Creatures.
Along with her business partner, Jeremy Price, she also operates Price Erickson, a commercial and residential interior design group. The design group and Heliotrope Architects — the architects behind many of Renee’s restaurants — have even been named a finalist for a James Beard Award in Outstanding Restaurant Design for Renee’s Willmott’s Ghost.
The Whale Wins
In 2012, Renee and her business partners Jeremy Price – the lead designer behind Sea Creatures – and Chad Dale – the hospitality group’s manager and broker — opened their third restaurant: The Whale Wins. The restaurant’s name comes from a painting Renee had purchased a year earlier: a 19th century image of a blue whale knocking hunters out of their boat.
The restaurant’s design draws inspiration from Renee’s time spent in Southern England and France — both in its feel and its food. With the charm of a Brittany-seaside cottage and the lightness of Scandinavia, the space is bright, with white-washed wood walls, and an Italian wood-fired oven that centers the space. The restaurant sits within a handsome converted warehouse.
Renee’s love of food is borne out of her childhood summers spent on the Tulalip Indian Reservation in the Pacific Northwest where she and her brother crabbed, fished, and picked blackberries. Later, she developed a love of oysters in her time spent traveling around Europe, particularly France, where she grew to love the culture around eating oysters on the half-shell over a glass of white wine.
Today, Renee thinks long and hard about where her products come from. “Since I have access to well-raised beef beautiful produce, and gorgeous, sustainability caught seafood near Seattle,” she writes in her cookbook, “I have the luxury of ordering the best of each.”
Renee has built a network of farmers, beekeepers, purveyors, and fishermen across Washington with whom she has maintained strong relationships. With produce from Whidbey Island, oysters from the Hood Canal, salmon from Lummi Island — to name a few — her restaurant’s ingredients are about 80% locally-sourced (within a 100-mile radius).
In an interview for Slow and Sustain, Renee notes, “I think from [when I began] until now, everything, I would say, about the industry has changed and some of the really exciting stuff is around sustainability. I remember having a really hard time buying produce that wasn’t grown in California or Mexico and now we largely don’t buy anything not grown from here. We have purchasing guides and things like that. I think it forces people…to make an extra effort.”
I’m not eleven anymore.
Now, the magic Renee creates in The Whale Wins — and the values which which she’s guided each of her endeavors — isn’t only a dream of what my home may look like, but a building block of a the values I hope to guide my life by and the output I might one day create.
Across every detail in The Whale Wins, Renee celebrates the dignity of the farmers, fisherman, chefs, artists, guests, and the food itself, that come together to form the spirit of the restaurant.
The emphasis on simple, unfussy, shared plates; the playful HELLO lightning inspired by one of Renee’s best friend’s greetings; the name taken from a painting Renee once bought; the care and attention to detail palpable to even an eleven year old; her relationships with farmers and fishers from right near where Renee grew up — that’s the real beauty of Renee’s creation. The humanity of it. Her restaurant isn’t good because the décor is nice or the food is delicious — although this is certainly true — Renee’s restaurant is capital-G Great because of the generosity and love with which she’s anchored the restaurant.
To give even a fraction of the gift that Renee’s given through her restaurants is what I hope to do in my own future — whether in a restaurant or some other form. The food and physical space is only the output of a far larger foundation borne out of conversation, compassion, courage, and care. What better way is there to lead a life?
Thank you, Renee.
Read more The Whale Wins here.