By Brett Anderson in the New York Times
Thanks to Mike C.
- Published Oct. 19, 2021Updated Oct. 20, 2021, 9:33 a.m. ET
SEATTLE — One of the first things you’ll notice about Bateau, a critically acclaimed steakhouse in a city typically associated with seafood, is that it doesn’t look like a steakhouse.
There is no shrimp cocktail or Caesar salad on the menu. The white, window-lined dining room will not be mistaken, as many steakhouses could be, for the man cave of a wealthy lawyer with a thing for cowboy-rancher iconography. In fact, by the time you order, it’s possible the kitchen will have run out of some steaks — rib-eye, New York strip, filet — that most diners consider prerequisites for a steakhouse.
Renee Erickson, the influential Seattle chef and Bateau’s co-owner, concedes that the restaurant bewilders some first-time customers. “It’s definitely not a steakhouse for everyone,” she said. “I wish it were.”
Bateau’s iconoclasm flows from its ambition to celebrate beef without supporting the industrial system that makes beef production so harmful to the environment. Ms. Erickson set out six years ago to open a steakhouse whose focus on local, sustainable ingredients aligned with the values at restaurants operated by her company, Sea Creatures, including the popular oyster bar Walrus and the Carpenter.
The environmentally conscious practices that Bateau follows — including whole-animal butchering — are hardly novel. But they’re nearly impossible to adhere to while still delivering what steakhouses have conditioned the nation’s diners to expect: a narrow lineup of steaks that are tender and marbled with fat. Both of those selling points are often products of an inhumane feedlot system that is complicit in the climate crisis.
All of this makes the restaurant nearly a genre of its own: a steakhouse that is also a critique of steakhouses, and a model of a better way forward.