Acclaimed Seattle restaurant Stateside closes alongside sibling bar

By

Seattle Times features editor

Stateside has closed for good. The Capitol Hill restaurant — which has earned local and national acclaim for its Vietnamese-French food since opening in 2014 — shuttered permanently after service on Friday.

Owner and chef Eric Johnson confirmed the closure Monday after posting a short tribute to Stateside’s 11-year run on social media. He said the restaurant on East Pike Street shut down Friday with its lease at an end.

This chaser will sting for the Seattle restaurant scene, which took a shot when Stateside’s next-door sibling bar, Foreign National, closed abruptly after last call on Thursday.

Johnson said it’s “tough to make these decisions, but we felt 11 years was a great run” for Stateside.

“Time for new chapters in life!” he added. “And incredible thanks to all our staff and wonderful guests through the years.”

When the restaurant opened in 2014, Seattle Times food reporter Bethany Jean Clement noted its “pretty, understated tropical-colonial look” and lauded Johnson’s résumé. Before launching Stateside, the chef worked in the kitchen at Daniel Boulud in New York City and opened restaurants for Jean-Georges Vongerichten in Paris and Shanghai.

In a 2017 roundup of local restaurants that will whisk you far away from Seattle, Clement described Stateside’s “palm-frond wallpaper, celadon booths, antiqued mirrors” and “weathered bar overhang.” She saluted the kitchen’s Vietnamese food, too, saying it “makes for an expeditious trip to that country’s tastes and textures, the cuisine’s pungencies and subtleties, the glorious heaps of fresh herbs.”

In 2023, the restaurant was named among the 25 best restaurants in Seattle by The New York Times — and for the past decade, Stateside plus Foreign National has been a sure bet for successful Seattle date nights.

Johnson said Monday that he doesn’t have a plan in place for his next act, other than taking a break.

“I do know that I’m staying in Seattle and am not ready to retire,” he said.

Food reporter Bethany Jean Clement contributed reporting.