This summer award-winning chef and Ballardite Renee Erickson of the Boat Street Cafe will open a new oyster bar in Ballard.
A look at the inside of the Kolstrand building by developer Chad Dale.
The Walrus and the Carpenter, named after this poem, is scheduled to open this July in the newly renovated Kolstrand Building (4743 Ballard Ave NW), developer Chad Dale tells us. According to the website, “The Walrus and the Carpenter blends the elegance of France with the casual comfort of a local fishing pub.” The new restaurant will be open at 4 p.m. daily and serve oysters, locally harvested clams and mussels, house-smoked fish, frites, seasonal soups, salads, fresh local organic vegetables, cured meats, cheese and grilled sausages. They will also serve Sunday brunch from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. An outdoor eating space is also planned.
Incredibly good news for Ballard! I can’t wait….
That is awesome. Boat Street is amazing. I hope they serve their amazing terrine.
This sounds like a great place, but what Ballard really needs is family restaurant.
Love it!
I love what’s happening with this building. My question is, what will happen around it? Currently, outdoor seating would look directly at the wall of a storage place. I’m hoping the renovated building will act as a southern extension of what’s happening on Ballard Ave, while working with the existing businesses around it.
Sounds very cool! I just love Ballard and in my opinion it just keeps getting better and better!
I love that poem.
Sounds like a great place though. Can’t wait
This is fantastic news. Looking very much forward to the opening of this restaurant and all the other businesses at Kolstrand.
However, I am really dismayed that Walrus and Carpenter Web site gives no credit to the writer of the poem…Lewis Carroll. They have the full poem on their Web site, but no mention of Mr. Carroll. There is an easy fix to this and I hope they do it soon.
Oh great, just what we need, another pretentious, over-priced restaurant to join Volterra and Bastille
Hill Dweller, I guess you don’t believe in the concept of ‘presumed innocence’? The chef is not planning it to be pretentious, and I don’t see a price list yet…Stay positive and classy, please, guys!
This is one of those things you’d have to be kind of a jerk not to like.
Yeah gentrification!
Bastille and Volterra are expensive and pretentious? Seriously? Both these places are downright cheap and down to earth in the grand scheme of urban restaurants.
This will be a great addition to what is already adding up to a nationally recognized collection of neighborhood restaurants. I literally jumped for joy when I read this!
I’m totally uninterested in the place, but that’s only because an oyster bar has limited appeal to vegetarians. :)
Here’s what reasonable prices mean to me. Can a family of four get out of the place for less than $50-$60 plus the bar bill? While I’ll occasionally go to a more expensive place, it’s pretty unlikely, even if the food is great. Truly cheap is a higher bar, but we don’t need to start that conversation.
And they totally should have credited Lewis Carroll.
Can a family of two adults have dinner and drinks for less than $60? I know we can’t, unless it’s happy hour, which isn’t always feasible with our busy schedules.
Very excited for this place. Now someone build a rooftop bar please!
I second Zippers rooftop bar request. That would be wonderful.
“Can a family of two adults have dinner and drinks for less than $60? ”
Sure you can, at home.
Gee BG, aren’t we discussing restaurants here? Reading is simple when you don’t sweat comprehension.
Rooftop bar. Rooftop bar!
Screw families with kids and your demands on the rest of us. That goes for vegans too. That is your choice. If you want to hit the town get a damn babysitter and leave the rugrats at home/or for the veggies, eat from the farmers market or whole foods. Why do you people always have to complain about not being able to afford all the bars and restaurants in Ballard? If you made the choice I did to not have children, we would probably see each other out all the time and be best buds. Poor poor you. Tell yourself that that kid is worth the cost…I LOVE not having kids. I help keep these bars/restaurants going by not having kids. I go to shows at the Sunset/Tractor/ Bit Saloon. I probably spend more on Ballard Ave in a month than you do in a year. Keep Ballard child free! Families stay home. You annoy us. Pictionary calls you. Kids are cool…I guess what I’m saying is that you made a choice to have ’em so don’t bitch about not having money to afford to go out all the time. That’s not too crazy an argument is it?
Hey Tim,
Have fun growing old all by your lonesome!
Or maybe we could act like responsible adults and make decisions that let us enjoy it all. I spend $$ on family and kids things and I spend $$ on adult things.
If I plan properly I can manage both, maybe not as often as some but often enough.
I agree that we need a family restaurant in the ‘hood but am very exciting for something new for adult night!
Events down around the gulf is going to put some price pressure on those local oysters and shellfish. I hope the owners make it.
Turns out, an award winning design studio is going to open ABOVE this oyster bar in Ballard. The Kolstrand Building will also be the new home of Turnstyle (currently above the Matador). turnstylestudio.com
tim, I’m sorry that you had nothing better to do at 1:37am early Friday morning than come on to this forum and tell people with kids how much they suck while they and their kids sleep. And thanks for speaking for everyone without kids (“you annoy us”).
If your rant was in reference to people asking for an affordable place to eat, I’m not sure why. No one is saying that all of the great new restaurants in our neighborhood are bad thing, but just that it would be nice to have another option. Maybe your reading comprehension after staggering home from one of your awesome nights out in Ballard was a little fuzzy.
Keep Ballard child-free? How about we try and keep Ballard a-hole free.
And leave the vegans alone, they can’t even eat bacon.
I continue to be amazed at the unhelpful discussions on this entire site. Any decent discussion gets hijacked by someone’s offensive opinion and then it turns into an argument. Speaking of children, these discussions all turn to dribble. I’m out!
I object to the commented who lumped Volterra and Bastille into the same category.
Volterra seems to put quality of ingredients, balance of flavors, presentation, and customer experience above all else. Any pretension they might develop would be justified — though I haven’t noticed any. And their brunch, despite it’s quality, is actually one of the cheapest around.
Bastille takes French bistro standards, throws them together in an assembly-line fashion, triples the price, and, to top it off, has pretty dickish service.
How are these two places related?
I just wanted to say that I checked their Web site again, and they have now credited Lewis Carroll. Yay! It appears that they read MyBallard and they took the advice. Even more excited to try them out now. I don’t like oysters, but the other items and the location sound great to me.
Nice restaurants are for adults, and kids who have been taught manners and respect. Otherwise take ’em to Chuckie Cheeses!
“Otherwise take ‘em to Chuckie Cheeses”
We know morons like this; they take their kids to places like Zeeks where they run around like banshees and then wonder why their kids can’t sit still in decent restaurants.
An oyster bar! How exciting! Hopefully they will hire local employees, as well. It was getting depressing watching everything close here last year (bookstores?!), and all these new restaurants seem promising for the local economy. I just wonder why we never see “Now Hiring” signs in the windows?