Ethan Stowell's restaurants have been the talk of the town since the chef, then 29, opened his fine-dining flagship, Union, in the shadow of the Seattle Art Museum in 2003. Since then, he's introduced the city to a trio of far more casual restaurants in Belltown (Tavolata), Queen Anne (How to Cook a Wolf) and Capitol Hill (Anchovies & Olives). Today, he announced plans to open another in Ballard's newly refurbished Kolstrand Building in July. Opening an adjoining oyster bar is his friend Renee Erickson, owner-chef at Boat Street Cafe. But with the good news comes the bad: Union will close Saturday, May 29. For Stowell, that closure has been a long time coming.

Ethan Stowell, at Tavolata [Seattle Times photo: Jimi Bates] and Renee Erickson in the courtyard at Boat Street Cafe [Kevin Casey for the Seattle Times].

"I'm not going to deny it," Stowell told me in February, "Union's taken a big hit with the closure of WaMu, and it's not profitable for me." With the economic downturn, "all the things that made Union busy in the past don't exist: the convention- and symphony business, the tourist business, expense accounts." For the last year and a half, he said, watching Union suffer from the fall-out has been gut-wrenching. "I've worked downtown for 15 years, and I've never seen it this rough."

Now, out of the winter doldrums and on to a new neighborhood, he's singing a happier tune. When opportunity knocked in Ballard where he lives in with his wife and business-partner, Angela, he jumped. In July, the Stowells plan to open Staple & Fancy Mercantile. The restaurant takes its name from the historic building's earliest days, when it was an old mercantile whose hand-painted walls advertised "staple and fancy products."

Ethan and Angela Stowell, earlier this month at the James Beard Awards in NYC where Stowell was a third-time nominee for "Best Chef Northwest."

Stowell said he's tired of bouncing around from one restaurant to another, and in the future, will be confident to leave his kitchens in the capable hands of chefs who do his name proud -- Brandon Kirksey at Tavolata, Matt Fortner at How to Cook a Wolf, and Charles Walpole at Anchovies & Olives. He's stoked to be getting back in the business of cooking.

In the Kolstrand Building near Shilshole -- home to Kolstrand Marine Supply Company for more than 80 years -- he's creating a restaurant "just for me," he said, with 35 seats in the dining room, eight at the bar and a menu that sounds like something that will have the fooderati at his doorstep nightly. Like the other three neighborhood restaurants in his stable, this one will focus on simple, well-sourced rustic fare and have a seasonal bent. He'll offer two menus.

The a la carte card will be limited, with appetizers like grilled sardines, burrata and fried softshell crab with aioli ($8-$13), fresh pastas ($14-$16) and entrees ($18-$22) including the likes of salt-roasted porkchops with lentils, morels and English peas. But for $45 a head patrons might say, "Show me your stuff," and the chef will let fly with a multi-course family-style meal available only for the entire table, whether you're a deuce or an eight-top. "We're going to heavily encourage people to put themselves in my hands," Stowell said. In doing so, he hopes to showcase the kind of organ meats and nose-to-tail cookery that's exciting chefs nationwide.

The investment group that owns the building bought it with the intention of maintaining as much of its original charm as they could, while bringing it up to code, Stowell said. "They wanted to make it a cool building, and they made it a cool building."

Two restaurants, under construction at 4742 Ballard Ave. N.W. Cool!
[photo courtesy: The Kolstrand Building].

The restaurant's design takes inspiration from the Kolstrand's historical architectural features, with hand-painted brick, original wood-plank floors and leaded glass. And viewed through a glass partition -- likely to be thrown open on a regular basis -- we'll find Erickson's seafood sanctuary, The Walrus and the Carpenter. Like Stowell's How to Cook a Wolf, the name has literary allusions.

The 45-seat restaurant (17 at the oyster bar) is being built in partnership with bartender Jeremy Price, who's worked at Boat Street. "He's always hounding me about wanting to open a bar with me," said Erickson, and so he'll tend bar here and help manage the place while she splits her time between her two restaurants. A third partner is developer Chad Dale, one of the building's owners. Dale has been "pestering" Erickson for a year to come aboard at the Kolstrand, she said, and she's finally given in on both counts. Neither Stowell nor Erickson wanted to take over the entire 2,400 square feet, so their happy solution was to share it.

Renee Erickson, sharing some oysters with her pals Jeremy Price (left) and Chad Dale.

At The Walrus and the Carpenter, oysters piled on ice will be a design focal-point, and a small patio on the Shilshole side of the building should add a certain allure. The menu is set to employ simple preparations of locally sourced shellfish and seafood-topped tartines, among other fine fare.

"I'll get my sausages from Russ at Rain Shadow Meats," said Erickson, giving the nod to her former Boat Street cook Russ Flint, whose butchershop just opened at the similarly redeveloped Melrose Project on Capitol Hill. "With meats, the rule I'm giving myself is raw (steak tartare), cured or in a casing: no steaks, pork chops or roast chicken." Though, she adds quickly taking that back, with her Francophile inclinations, she's likely to give in on the latter.