It is the largest restaurant in the Market, three floors with breathtaking panoramic views of Elliott Bay, Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains beyond, but a first glance at Lowell's Restaurant, in the main Market, can be deceiving.
Look through the Market aisle windows and it seems like it is a tiny coffee shop with a half-dozen tables. It is not immediately obvious that there is a full bar on the second floor and even more seating on the third floor.
"We're continuously trying to overcome the image problem on the first floor that we're just a seven table diner," said Mark Monroe, Lowell's manager. "You go up to the third floor and we have another 100 seats. We've got three floors of windows overlooking West Seattle, the Olympic Mountains, the ferries coming and going - it never gets old."
The ambience is utilitarian Formica and chrome. This is not a place to kick back and take two hours with lunch or dinner.
"It is an authentic seafood dive in the best sense of the word," said Monroe, explaining that the Chatalas family, which owns it, doesn't want the restaurant to be slick, just a good Market restaurant - clean and well lit, serving quality food.
And that is just what it is. No less an authority than Sunset Magazine last year proclaimed Lowell's the best place in Seattle to let down your hair, have a big bowl of steamed clams and a micro-brew, and watch the sun go down. The Seattle Visitor's "Where" magazine voted Lowell's breakfast the best in town three years in a row.
Customers order at the counter near the door, pick a seat, and their food is delivered to them, even on the third floor. Full table service is available only in the bar on the second floor. The table area along the second floor windows is restricted to the over-21 crowd, but minors can dine at the six booths next to windows looking down into the Market.
"You can sit, you can people watch, watch guys hauling vegetables..." Monroe said, gesturing out the second floor windows at one of the Market's hypnotically appealing produce stands. "Look at the colors. That's a picture right out of a magazine."
"I love going to work," enthused Kittie Irwin, a server in the bar. "I laugh here every day. It is such a crazy cross-section [of people]. You never know who will come up the stairs."
Irwin was attending graduate school when she started working at Lowell's. She liked it so much it became her full-time occupation, even though she has never met anyone famous there.
In 1908, the year the Market was founded, Edward and William Manning paid $1,900 to open Manning's Coffee House where Lowell's is now. Manning's sold fresh roasted peanuts in front and coffee inside. This eventually became the "flagship" original that grew into 40-odd Manning's Cafeteria restaurants up and down the West Coast.
Reid Lowell, a manager for Manning's, acquired the location and renamed it in 1957. He also operated "Lowell's Broiler" across the street from the Bon Marche. In 1981 Bill and Sue Chatalas took over Lowell's, keeping the name, and operating it with their two young sons, doing all duties on the three floors. The sons, Marc and Brett, eventually started and still operate their own original and very successful "Cactus" restaurants in Madison Park, near Lake Washington, and Kirkland. Bill Chatalas' father, by the way, ran the Philadelphia Fish Company in the Market in the mid '30s where Jack's Fish Spot now stands.
In the '50s Lowell's catered mainly to market workers - opening early in the morning and closing early afternoons five days a week. Since the Chatalas family began operating it, it has expanded to seven days a week, though it still closes early for a restaurant - 5 p.m. in the winter.
Because the ordering is done near the door, a line sometimes snakes out into the Market aisle, but Monroe said the only time there is a wait for tables is Saturday and Sunday.
"The lines are deceiving," he explained. "By the time you get your table the food is almost there."
The menu includes grilled sandwiches, fresh seafood and beautiful fresh market salads in a wide variety of choices. But after seeing the Market's fresh fish stalls most visitors have seafood in mind, and fish and chips is Lowell's number one order.
"Our specialty, hands down, is our fish and chips, which we hand-bread daily," Monroe boasted, adding that the restaurant has very little storage, so they make everything from scratch, every day. Last year Lowell's sold 30,000 orders of fish and chips. "We have a postage stamp-size kitchen with a 70-inch grill that puts out 1,000 meals in a summer day, and then we run and find people!"
A regular, non-paying customer, is Lowell's seagull - an airborne freeloader who hangs out around the windows looking for handouts. Diners frequently feed him through the open windows, though the restaurant tries to discourage it.
"The seagull is savvy enough to discern a French fry from a pickle slice," Monroe said. "The errant flying food rains down on tourists shopping five floors below on Western Avenue." The seagull was made famous in a Pike Place Market coloring book that is available at various locations in the market.
Opening windows can be a liability in a place so open to the sky.
"I went downstairs a couple of weeks ago and there was mayhem when I returned, mayhem!" Irwin recalled. "There was a pigeon loose in the place. A customer caught it with her hands, let it go out the window, wiped her hands on her pants and picked up her sandwich. Yeah, just picked it up. She said, 'It's okay, I'm in wildlife.'"
Lowell's Restaurant is open for breakfast from 7 to 11 a.m., lunch and dinner from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, Friday and Saturday to 8 p.m. Summer hours keep the restaurant open until 8 p.m. daily beginning June 1. The bar's last call is 9 p.m.
Korte Brueckmann is the editor of the Pike Place Market News. You can reach him at www.ppmnews@qwest.net
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