Lioness

Lioness is tiny and knows it. Eight indoor tables, each one full from the minute the doors open, and a bar area too tight for stools, so drinkers stand at it the way they would in Rome or Barcelona. Seattle Met's description catches the register precisely: candles flicker in Chianti bottles, and Renée Erickson picked out the custom-painted plates that hold the oysters, the smoked cod mousse, and a meatball so compelling it needs no spaghetti. It opened at the turn of 2024 in Phinney Ridge as part of Erickson's Sea Creatures group, with James Ingles as general manager. The food is loud, salty, Italian small plates — burrata, brothy clams, bouncy cavatelli, and that $18 meatball, which is over-spiced in the way an over-spiced meatball should be.

For a non-drinker the appeal is that the bar has a genuine reputation here rather than a token gesture. The Infatuation's account of the room has people mingling and sipping bergamot-infused spritzes and frothy zero-proof garibaldis alongside the martinis, which is the right comparison — a garibaldi is orange juice and Campari, and the frothiness comes from hard-shaken juice, so a zero-proof one is a genuine drink rather than a substitution. Cheeky & Dry, Seattle's own alcohol-free bottle shop and about as expert a local judge as exists, rates the bar's spirit-free programme top shelf and credits bartender Hudson with never once failing to deliver a craveable non-alcoholic cocktail, keeping around three seasonal ones at a time. What we cannot do is name them. Lioness's website sits behind a security challenge that will not let us read the menu, so the current drinks and their prices have to be confirmed in the room. Two smaller notes. Because there are eight tables and no bar seating, arriving early or standing is the plan. And on awards: Renée Erickson won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northwest in 2016, but that was for The Whale Wins, seven years before Lioness existed — it is her award, not this restaurant's.