Fuller's at the Sheraton

UPDATE: Fuller's has been closed for some time now. The 90s boom is over, and upmarket restaurants have been closing or changing their focus. We miss Fuller's and, in New York City, L'Espinasse.

Fuller's is a quiet, elegant restaurant in the lobby of the Sheraton Towers Hotel in downtown Seattle. The food is also quiet and elegant, emphasizing excellent preparation of great local ingredients of the Northwest, without a lot of fuss and flash.

This means a meal might start with grilled Washington State oysters with a tarragon salad, or a romaine lettuce caesar salad with smoke clams and mussels. An alternate starter was crab cake with Dungeness crab from the nearby Olympic Peninsula. Being an elegant restaurant, where a coat and tie are not out of place, Fuller's serves wonderful foie gras. This comes from the Hudson Valley, but the garnishes are local - blackberries and arugula, or blueberries with a green salad and a freshly baked brioche.

We love the seafood at Fuller's, especially the Copper River salmon, from Alaska, in the late spring. They'll serve with barley and brocolli rabe or with white beans, pancetta, spinach, mushrooms and romesco sauce. The flavors and textures are balanced without a discordant note. They aim to please and satisfy, not to impress.

We also love the meats. It is hard to get lamb where we live now, so we've come to Fuller's for the lamb. It is comfort food with truffled mashed potatoes and spinach. Every entree has a meat component, a starch component and a vegetable component. So, the venison is served with cranberry beans, swiss chard and an English pea puree. The Chilean sea bass is served on a risotto with sizzled carrots.

As for the desserts, we haven't a clue. We are always so satisfied after our appetizer and entree that we've never bothered. The meal is already an elegant whole. Whenever we crave a quiet, elegant meal, excellently prepared, we come to Fuller's and will continue to do so.

Review: 24 January 2001