New Ballard seafood restaurant from vaunted chef debuts Thursday

By

Seattle Times food writer

Chef Victor Steinbrueck, owner of the critically acclaimed Fremont seafood restaurant, Local Tide, will open his second seafood counter, GoodMart, this Thursday in Ballard.

GoodMart will be a “market and deli” concept, Steinbrueck said, with a focus on wild-caught, sustainable and locally harvested seafood.

On the restaurant side of the new venture, the 40-seat cafe will include an oyster bar and a lunch and dinner menu focused on fish fillets that will be cooked various ways, including grilled sockeye, lingcod katsu, steamed rockfish and smoked black cod. These Japanese-inspired meal trays will come with sides of rice, salad and pickles.

The menu will eventually include more seafood noshes in the form of small and shared plates, the chef said last week.

GoodMart will also carry poke bowls, tuna salads and other ready-made meals, Steinbrueck said. The market’s cooler and gourmet display cases will also showcase confit albacore tuna loins, cured salmon collars and seared albacore along with appetizers like smoked salmon dips.

In the near future, customers will also be able to preorder whole fish at GoodMart, management said.

Located at 5130 Ballard Ave. N.W., GoodMart sits along the main restaurant row of Ballard, across from two big names in the local food scene: Little Beast and The Walrus and The Carpenter.

Tan Vinh: 206-515-5656 or tvinh@seattletimes.com. Tan Vinh is a food writer for The Seattle Times and the original host of “Seattle Eats,” a podcast from KUOW.