i.
Elena Voss
Chef and owner. Grew up in Wallingford. Canlis, Franny's, Etxebarri. On the grill most nights.
Elena Voss opened Coalstone in the winter of 2019, in what had been a cannery office off Bell Street. The room came with a brick north wall and a lot of hush.
Before Belltown she cooked at Canlis, then at Franny's in Brooklyn, then for two years at Etxebarri outside Bilbao — the wood-fire restaurant that quietly changed how a lot of American chefs think about smoke. She came home to Seattle in 2018 with a plan for a room that would serve one menu, six nights, and cook everything over coal.
She built the hearth herself with a mason from Ballard. It's still the loudest thing in the room.
—
"
Coal is unforgiving. It tells you every time you were paying attention and every time you weren't.
— Elena
I.
The fire.
Anthracite, oak lump, a little cherry near the end. Started at four; steady by six.
We use a mix of anthracite briquettes and Cascade oak lump. Anthracite for base heat — long-burning, low-smoke; the oak for the flare that finishes a steak. In the last minutes we throw in a small handful of cherry wood, which gives a faint, sweet char you can almost taste behind the salt.
The grill is a Josper hybrid, closed on three sides. Coals live below; the meat sits four inches above. Nothing on the menu is finished in the oven. If a cut needs to rest longer than eight minutes, we cut it thinner.
The room smells like dinner from the moment we open the door. Some guests notice within the first sentence; others don't notice until they leave and step back out into Second Avenue.
II.
The source.
Four ranches. Whole animals. Nothing that traveled by air.
We buy whole primals from four ranches in the Pacific Northwest — Painted Hills in Oregon, Skagit River Ranch and Mishima Reserve in Washington, and Carman Ranch in the Wallowas. Between them they cover grass-finished, grain-finished, and American Wagyu.
Because we take whole primals, some cuts show up on the menu once and don't return for a month. That's the trade for buying this way. It also means most of what you're eating on any given night was cut in the room the day before.
Fish comes from Harbour House at Pike Place, produce from Full Circle in Carnation, bread from Macrina three blocks north. Nothing on the menu is more than a day's drive from the door.
III.
Who is here on a Wednesday.
A small team, mostly here from the start.
ii.
Ren Ito
Sous chef. Handles the aging cellar. Was at Sushi Kashiba across the market before us.
iii.
Marisol Corvin
General manager, wine director, and the reason the room doesn't feel small on a Saturday.
—
"
The dinner is the point. Everything else is us trying to stay out of its way.
— The Coalstone team
IV.
A short list of things we do not do.
Menus more than eleven items long. Music after seven. Photograph the food between courses. Rush the check. Serve steak straight off the fire. Take walk-ins for larger than four. Answer the phone in the middle of service — leave a message and we'll return it before opening.