The Most Anticipated Seattle Restaurant Openings of Summer 2023

Living in Seattle means living in a city being built around you. Single-family homes are being torn down in favor of Lego-like townhouses; low-rise buildings have been replaced by massive construction sites that birth gleaming new mixed-used monstrosities. There are still remnants of the old city — neon and grit, grunge-era businesses turned kitschy by time — but they’re scattered and growing fewer by the week. You see one of these old restaurants or bookstores and feel a nostalgia tempered by dread: How much longer before this beloved scrap of old gets swallowed by the new?

When we’re talking about new restaurants we are, unavoidably, talking about this New Seattle. This summer should see the opening of Shared Roof, a mixed-use development that will change the complexion of Phinney Ridge and give Ben’s Bread a permanent home. Beacon Hill’s Kusina Filipina was displaced by high rents years ago; now the family is coming back to the neighborhood with CheBogz, inside a new building opposite the light rail.

How Seattleites feel about all this change is probably beyond the scope of a restaurant preview. Are some of these new buildings ugly? Yes. Are they necessary in order to accommodate the influx of new residents, and the new residents’ money? Also yes. You can rage against change, but you can’t stop it. Maybe the most we can hope for is that the developers in charge with sketching the outlines of the new city factor in the old city’s communities to their plans. Among other things, this means giving us some good new restaurants.

Here are some of those restaurants that we’re most excited about opening from June until the end of August. Keep in mind that opening a restaurant is a complicated task and dates are subject to change.

Ben’s Bread

Chad Dale, one of the owners of Renee Erickson’s famed Sea Creatures group, is the developer behind Shared Roof, a mixed-used building on Phinney Ridge where he’ll be living as resident. So naturally the restaurants on the ground floor are going to be top-notch. The big draw will be Sea Creatures’s new restaurant Lioness, but the opening date for that has been pushed back until the fall. But don’t worry: Buzzy sourdough pop-up Ben’s Bread, run by Ben Campbell, who used to be Sea Creatures’s bread guy, is still slated to open soon, most likely in July. It will be a relief not to have to chase Campbell’s seasonal pastries and awe-inspiring loaves around town anymore.

Address: 7009 Greenwood Avenue N.
Anticipated opening date: TBD, likely July

CheBogz

When Kusina Filipina was chased out of Beacon Hill by a landlord seeking higher rents in 2017, it left a hole in the neighborhood — a hole that’s still visible when you pass by the vacant storefront. Since that closure, Patrixia and Paula Paraiso, daughters of the family that owned Kusina Filipina, started a food truck that is now returning to Beacon Hill as a brick-and-mortar restaurant serving the Filipino classics they’re known for, like pork ribs, chicken adobo, and longganisa.

Address: 2709 17th Avenue S
Anticipated opening date: June 24
Read more: High Rents Forced a Beloved Filipino Family Restaurant to Close. Now It’s Back.

Layers

Another food truck that is becoming a full restaurant, Layers is the brainchild of Avery and Ashley Hardin, who view sandwiches as a medium to play with textures and flavors associated with gourmet, high-end cuisine. Their new Green Lake location won’t just feature their boundary-pushing sandwiches, but salads and small plates as well as pastries and biscuits from baker Ellary Collins, formerly of the London Plane.

Layers

Address: 7900 East Green Lake Drive N
Anticipated opening date: July 5
Read more: How Layers Brought Truly Gourmet Sandwiches to Seattle

Moto in Belltown

Lee Kindell and Nancy Gambin’s hit pizza spot Moto is expanding to Belltown this summer — we think. This Belltown location, where pizzas will be made with robot assistance and greens will be grown via vertical hydroponics, has been in the works at least since last year. A new Moto would be big news, since there’s still a months-long waiting list for the pizza at the West Seattle and Edmonds locations. When we talked to Kindell in April he said that he was just going through the final inspections, and we’re trying to get a more concrete opening date, but for now we’re gonna mark this TBD. Moto does have a fancy new website, hinting at its dreams of future expansion.

Address: 3131 Western Avenue
Anticipated opening date: TBD
Read more: Seattle’s Buzziest Pizza Is So Popular You Can’t Order It

Sophon

When Karuna Long took over Greenwood’s neighborhood-y cocktail spot Oliver’s Twist, he quietly built it into a rave-worthy Cambodian restaurant, but the kitchen is too small to realize his ambitions. So for the past several months the chef has been fundraising in an effort to open his dream restaurant, Sophon, a few blocks away. The goal is to open this summer.

Address: 7314 Greenwood Ave N
Anticipated opening date: TBD

Paper Cake

Rachel Yang, the restaurateur behind Revel and Joule, is expanding her footprint on Stone Way in Wallingford with a cake shop with Gabby Park of Saint Bread. That’d be an exciting enough prospect if we didn’t have more details, but they’re clearly planning to play with a lot of traditionally Asian flavors, a la a Fruit Loops cake with lemon sponge, lemongrass lychee mousse, and raspberry buttercream. Hopefully it’ll open by the end of the summer, we want that cake!

Address: 4106 Stone Way N
Anticipated opening date: Late summer
Read more: Joule’s Rachel Yang Is Launching a Cake Store

Update June 8, 4:00 p.m.: This article has been revised to reflect that the opening of Renee Erickson’s Lioness has been pushed back until the fall.