As news changes rapidly about the novel coronavirus outbreak in Seattle, restaurants have been scrambling to adjust. The upscale, iconic restaurant Canlis is no exception, as it announced it would halt its James Beard Award-winning Queen Anne main dining service Monday and change its business plan, for the time being. Instead of the high-end experience it’s banked on for decades, the restaurant will offer diners three options: a takeout-only breakfast spot called The Bagel Shed, a pickup option with burgers called Drive On Thru, and a meal delivery service called Family Meal. Co-owner Mark Canlis tells Eater Seattle that orders for the latter will be placed via Tock with a delivery range of approximately 7 miles from the restaurant.
“Fine dining is not what Seattle needs right now,” read a post on Canlis’s official Facebook page. “Instead, this is one idea for safely creating jobs for our employees, while serving as much of the city as we can.” According to the restaurant, each new option will cover different meals of the day, Monday through Friday. The Bagel Shed has bagels, spreads, and coffee from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m., while the drive-thru has burgers, veggie melts, the well-known Canlis Salad, and ice cream sandwiches from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. From 6 p.m. to 8 p.m, Family Meal will offer a rotating selection of meals delivered to diners’ doorstep, along with bottles of wine. Canlis says the restaurant is currently “fully staffed” and “will re-open the main restaurant when the city is ready for fine dining.”
Canlis isn’t the only major player in the Seattle dining scene that has needed to adapt the way it operates. Tom Douglas recently made the decision to close 12 out of his 13 restaurants for at least two months. Edouardo Jordan of JuneBaby, Salare, and Lucinda Grain Bar announced on Instagram that there will be an “aggressive push on take out orders” at his restaurants over the next three weeks. And Fremont’s upscale tasting menu restaurant Art of the Table is now offering a $60 takeout menu, with roasted chicken and mac ‘n’ cheese. With tourism down more than 40 percent and some restaurants (in Douglas’s case, especially) seeing drops in sales by as much as 90 percent over recent days, it seems that every idea is being explored.
- Canlis [Official]
- All coverage of Canlis [ESEA]
- How Coronavirus Has Impacted the Seattle Food World [ESEA]