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After The Fall

Stars went dark, but bright lights shine still

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BARRY WONG At Crush, Jason and Nicole Wilson are building a reputation for taking fresh approaches to familiar foods. Jason was executive chef at Stars restaurant in the early, dazzling days of its short life.

IN THE SUMMER of 1998, Stars restaurant opened amid a glittery buzz of anticipation in Seattle's uptown Pacific Place. And even though it came in a virtual flurry of restaurant openings, Stars was the one getting the most attention. For one thing, it was serving some of the most compelling food. But more than that, Stars' brief, shining moment marked a milestone for the Seattle restaurant scene.

More noteworthy than its much-touted new level of chic was the way the place embodied the grand, pre-apocalyptic mood at the end of the 20th century. A lot of that mood came from Jeremiah Tower, the Berkeley bad boy who some say helped sire the food revolution and its "new American cuisine." If Tower wasn't exactly slaving over a hot stove, he was certainly holding court in the dining room and bar. And what a court it was: A larger-than-life shellfish bar sparkled with oysters on ice, cocktails flowed, and incredibly well-cooked food emanated from the kitchen in the same easy way that the staff seemed to float around the dining room.

But the dream faded almost as quickly as it began. Financial problems had already been mounting; Tower's personal and business relationships had frayed. Then, seemingly overnight, the Seattle restaurant fell into oblivion. Even before the placed closed in the spring of 2001, the star-spangled carpets were rolled away in favor of generic beige, and the stunning shellfish bar went dry.

But the re-emergence of certain key staffers since then is testament to their tenacity as well as their ability to adapt to changing times.

Shayn Bjornholm, a brilliant floor manager at Stars with a keen palate for wine, became the wine guru at Canlis. He is now one of only 74 professionals with the Master Sommelier title in North America. Tom Arthur, who had left Canlis to work at Stars at about the same time, now oversees a revitalized Union Square Grill. Another manager, Nicole Blakely left to help open the award-winning Town Hall Restaurant in San Francisco. Players such as these are what made Stars so extraordinary, and chief among them was Executive Chef Jason Wilson.

Wilson left Stars two years after it opened to start a private catering company called Crush, and in February 2005, with his wife and business partner Nicole Wilson, he opened a restaurant by the same company name. Wilson serves what he calls "modern American cuisine." If this sounds a lot like the old "new American cuisine" promoted by Tower, it is; but like other practitioners of the modern style, Wilson emphasizes the origins of his seasonal, local, natural and organic products at least as much as he does his own contemporary twists on familiar foodstuffs. Crush captures the mood of this era as effectively as Stars captured the mood of that one.

Greg Atkinson is author of "Entertaining in the Northwest Style." He can be reached at greg@northwestessentials.com. Barry Wong is a Seattle-based freelance photographer. He can be reached at studio@barrywongphoto.com.