Another day, more change-ups on the Seattle scene — this time from one of the city's most prolific restaurateurs.
Ethan Stowell has put his restaurants Anchovies & Olives and Bar Cotto up for sale. According to an announcement, the restaurant group‘s “focus has shifted to other concepts on Capitol Hill and across the city,” meaning Stowell’s two other Italian places in the neighborhood — Rione XIII and Tavolata Capitol Hill, both within about a half-mile — and 12 other restaurants throughout Seattle. Anchovies & Olives opened at 15th and Pine in February of 2009; little sibling Bar Cotto opened next door four years later. Ethan and partner Angela Stowell “feel that at this time, more could be done with the great spaces on 15th Avenue by a new owner/operator who wants to make the place their own,” the announcement says.
MEANWHILE, if you’ve been wondering what will become of the former Sullivan’s Steakhouse space downtown, wonder no more: It is set to become Ethan Stowell’s seventeenth restaurant, Cortina (unless Anchovies & Olives and Bar Cotto close first, in which case it will be his fifteenth restaurant). The plan for the menu is a downtown edition of Stowell-style Italian — lots of appetizers, pizza and pasta, and a few entrees. It’s a big space, and it’ll have a big bar: 80 seats there, with 40 or 50 in the dining room, plus private rooms, “good for corporate lunches, drinks and snacks after work, private dining/meetings but also a fun place for people to go after shopping or before or after the theater,” according to Angela Stowell.
Cortina’s projected opening is January or February of next year. The space at Seventh and Union is just a few blocks up from the site of Stowell’s very first restaurant, the haute Union — the only other restaurant he’s ever closed down, back in 2010. Before it was part of the Sullivan’s chain, the soon-to-be Cortina space was the Lost Lady American Cantina for all of two months and, prior to that, the Union Square Grill for approximately forever.