The James Beard Award–Winning Restaurant the Whale Wins Is Closing Permanently
Now yet another shoe has dropped, and it's a doozy: The Whale Wins, the celebrated Fremont restaurant and pantry, is closing permanently on Tuesday, October 28. Its lease is expiring, and rather than renewing, Sea Creatures is pulling the plug.
'This was not an easy decision,' said Erickson in a press release. 'The Whale Wins has meant the world to us, and to so many people who've celebrated birthdays, anniversaries, graduations and ordinary Wednesdays at its tables. But like many restaurants, we're facing rising costs that have outpaced our sales — and we've also seen fewer guests walking through our doors.'
The Whale Wins opened in 2012 to widespread acclaim. Bon Appetit named it one of the best new restaurants in the country and Eater put it on its national best restaurants list a few years later. In 2016, the Whale Wins earned Erickson a James Beard Award in the Best Chef: Northwest category.
But those laurels haven't translated into sales, at least not lately. The Whale Wins 'has been losing money for a number of years now,' said Sea Creatures co-owner Jeremy Price in an email. 'We've tried just about everything there to turn things around—adding a larder / taking out seating, streamlining the bar program, adding lunch / brunch, taking away lunch, many different happy hour promotions, wine events, a wine club, and on and on. We just haven't been able to make it work, unfortunately. It is a fantastic restaurant, but is older, and we find that many diners gravitate to what's new, rather than becoming regulars at established, mature restaurants.'
Price noted that Sea Creatures has a history of closing restaurants that aren't working and said this is not connected to the temporary closure of Bateau and Boat Bar — in that case, ownership is 'confident the Capitol Hill restaurants will return to profitability with some tweaks in layout and format.' It doesn't mean that Sea Creatures is shrinking, either; the group is opening three new restaurants in the Pioneer Square development Railspur later this year, and Price said that workers at Whale are being offered jobs there.
But Whale's closure may presage a bad year for Seattle restaurants in general. Those same trends that Price identified as hurting the Fremont restaurant's bottom line are also problems for other businesses. 'It is a really difficult time for many restaurants,' Price said. 'We do not have more closures planned, but I think we will continue to see lots of restaurants going under in the next year or so.'
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