After spending a surprising amount of time wandering around the new-and-improved Seattle Art Museum, we felt a need to go find some dinner. As the designated food obsessor, I suggested a few options, and we decided to check out Chez Shea. J and I have been to Matt’s in the Market twice before, but we’d never been to its next-door neighbor, and everyone liked the look of the bistro menu, so into Shea’s Lounge we went. This turned out to be exactly the right thing to do.

Our waitress showed us to a table by the window, giving us an excellent view of the water, the pigs on top of the market, and the Flying Fish stand. Tables with “reserved” signs were all around us, but I felt that we had the best table in the room – not bad for walking in cold on a Saturday evening. Drinks were very nice: I had a pear brandy sidecar, good but not as excellent as the same thing at Park Kitchen in Portland. H had a Bloody Mary which seemed to please her, and J got a very nice glass of Bordeaux.

We ordered mainly off the bistro menu, which had a very attractive prixe fixe selection as well as à la carte items, but H was able to order off of an à la carte menu from Chez Shea as well. Between the four of us, we tried a duck carpaccio (not raw, but still delicate and tasty), green salad with fresh pears and cheese, Provençal crêpe stuffed with squash and eggplant, crêpes with roasted garlic, leeks and chanterelles, yam soup, and beef tenderloin. Everything was fresh tasting, bright and summery. The sauce on the tenderloin, especially, was so good we raved about it to the waitress, and she went off to pass our compliments to the chef, with the promise that he would get such a swelled head that no-one would be able to live with him.

A side note here about the service: I have seen some great service recently, most notably at Dahlia Lounge and every time we’ve eaten at Eva, but the waitress at Shea’s was one of the best I’ve seen. She was friendly but not unprofessional, she had a sense of humor but didn’t linger at the table longer than she should, she made us feel that we were getting special treatment, and I never once had to wait for her to show up when I needed something – she just appeared. Magic.

On to dessert! P got the crème brûlée, which was very impressively heaped with fresh berries and a gingersnap cookie. H got mango sorbet, and J had a lemon-white chocolate tartlet with fresh berries. I managed to get a small wedge of cheese with a few light crackers and a small tub of olives – not on the menu except as a full-size cheese plate, so I was very grateful to be able to mini-size it. The cheese was a Fleurs des Alpes, which I don’t think I’d had before. I’ll be having it again. We finished off with coffee and headed out to stagger around the block before the long drive home, full but extremely happy.

Shea’s Lounge
at Chez Shea
Top Floor, Corner Market building
94 Pike Street, Suite 34
Seattle, WA 98101