Restaurant Review: The Corson Building

If you’ve been eating your way around Seattle this year, you’ve probably noticed that local chefs and restaurateurs are experimenting with how to feed us. Local, organic and seasonal menus are commonplace, and we’re seeing more and more of the “nasty bits” (also known as offal: sweetbreads, heart, tongue and the like) on menus, too. Lately, there’s been a renewed emphasis on the social aspects of a meal, a return to the idea of food as impetus for bringing people together. Communal tables are now de rigueur in the hippest eateries, forcing a generation of computer- and gadget-obsessed (but sometimes socially challenged) diners to stretch their comfort zones and share dinner (or at least table space) with strangers.

Chef Matthew Dillon is taking all of this a step further: At The Corson Building, Dillon’s supper club, he’s not only making us sit with strangers, he’s also requiring us to surrender control. You see, at The Corson Building, there’s no menu, no wine list, no “I’ll have my steak cooked medium-well.” It’s more like a dinner party at a friend’s house than eating in a restaurant.

Dillon is already a household name among foodies; the reluctant Food & Wine magazine up-and-comer (he was included in that magazine’s list of the Top 10 Best New Chefs of 2007) whose diminutive strip-mall eatery, Sitka & Spruce, is a personal expression of his pared-down, ingredient-focused style of cooking. Still, despite his unexpected success at Sitka, Dillon wasn’t planning to open another restaurant until he noticed a “For Lease” sign on The Corson Building in spring 2007. The nearly century-old home, built by and originally home to an Italian stonemason and his family, had caught Dillon’s eye years earlier. Its tile ceilings, arched windows and lush garden with gurgling fountain (complete with a Venus-like statue) are stunning yet so out of place in the shadow of the Corson Street underpass, snugly pushed up against train tracks and under the landing path of nearby Boeing Field. Double-takers driving by are apt to wonder when this bucolic Italian country house dropped out of the sky and landed in the midst of all these planes, trains and automobiles.

Dillon asked his friend Wylie Bush, owner of charming Joe Bar on Capitol Hill, to be his business partner; then, he and Bush picked up hammers, shovels, levels and drills and went to work on the place. It took a year and a half to gut it, add a modern kitchen, re-plaster interior walls, plant heaps of herbs and edible flowers, and add a chicken coop and a wood-fired grill to the wrought-iron-gated property. It gave Dillon plenty of time to think about exactly what he wanted The Corson Building to become. And that’s when he decided he didn’t want it to be a restaurant.

That’s right: Even though Dillon is cooking multi-course, thought-provoking food (and charging a healthy $90 per person for it), The Corson Building is not really a restaurant, at least not in the traditional sense. There’s just one seating per night, and the whirlwind three-plus-hour dinners—served two or three nights a week by reservation only—are unpredictable. At times it feels like Bush, Dillon and company are winging it. Dillon prepares whatever strikes his fancy, and diners simply eat what they’re served. Squeamish? Picky? Beware.

Or better yet, relax. You just might be surprised. After being greeted by sommelier Marc Papineau with glass of sparkling wine and a tasty nibble (fresh cherries during my summer visit), we were left to wander about and admire the gardens bursting with lettuces and tomato plants, or to duck into the kitchen to run a hand over the gorgeous marble countertop. Then we were shown to our seats in the dimly lit, antique dining room where three heavy, dark wood tables—each snugly seating 10—were pre-set with mismatched silverware and sparkling wine glasses.