Brady Williams, former Executive chef at Canlis, and owner of the soon to open TOMO restaurant in White Center loves the community already. This is fine dining in every sense from the charcoal gray interior, to the art, music, staff and prix fixe menu. It's located at 9811 16th SW.

Why White Center? 

"It's a vibrant, diverse neighborhood that seems to be very community focused." Williams said,  "Seems like my experience here is that the businesses and the community really tend to support each other and take care of each other and champion each other and as a hospitality area, that's like at the core of what we do, you know." He sees similarities to where he grew up in Whittier California.

Starting Sept. 9 he will be joined by his own hand picked staff in preparing food in a fashion never seen in this area. 

Instead of a conventional set of ala carte menu items, TOMO, will offer two five-course tasting menus for dinner at $68 per person (including one vegetarian). The menu will change seasonally, even "micro-seasonally" he said with a focus on produce and limited proteins. "This will not be a steakhouse," he emphasized. "I think at lunch you'll find a lot of like raw or lightly cooked fish and shellfish when it's in season."

There's considerable buzz in the food centric media about TOMO with both Seattle Met and Eater doing stories about it. So the interest has led to a complete sellout for the first few weeks of operation.

Reservations are made through a site called TOCK but won't open up again until Oct. 1.

Much of the inspiration for the menu and Williams style comes from his upbringing and his mother's Japanese heritage. "From age 15 to 19 my grandparents owned a diner in Seal Beach California and he worked there. "My mom and aunt were the managers," he explained. TOMO in fact is named for his grandmother Tomoko Ishiwata Bristol, who is now 94 and still inspires him.

He left home when he was 15, after being recruited as a hockey player (he was a goalie) for a team in Chicago (who then loaned him to a team in Detroit). These teams were minor league affiliates of NHL teams.

What he learned in sports applied to his work as a chef. He became executive chef at Canlis when he was 29 and while he had cooked in Dallas, and New York City, Seattle was new for him.

To run an efficient restaurant means being a leader, "It's an absolute team, so that's that's what I learned first and foremost on that side, I never worked in the northwest before, I cooked under some really great people. So I was exposed to brand new product. I learned a ton about the seasons and the micro seasons of the Northwest." 

The more limited ingredients means being creative with what you have.

"It really is like trying to generate as much complexity and depth through as few means as possible, through simplicity, It's complexity through simplicity, It's the idea that you either add something until it's right or take away from something until it's right and I'd rather, take away. I've considered my cooking style to be seasonally focused, ingredient focused, and it kind of banks on my Japanese heritage more than it does any Eurocentric influence."

A sample dinner menu, posted on their website reads:

Sungold tomato, cherry, verbena

Dumplings a la blanca,

Plankton spot prawn, ennis hazelnut,

Our honey lamb,

Fava bean, curds and whey, fig leaf, blackberry 68

Sample Dinner supplements 

Hokkaido uni pizza 20
Honeydew and sake lees kakigori 15

Sample Lunch Menu

Sungold tomato, cherry, verbena 13
Rockfish ceviche, buckwheat tostada 13
Cured duck breast, hazelnut, melon 16
Smoked salmon, big leaf maple, frisee 16
Market greens, radish 14
Grilled spot prawn, smoked chilies 18
Baked egg, potato, ikura 24
Squash, cranberry bean, fennel 22
Lamb belly, fava bean, curds and whey 31
Pastrami, fried egg, cabbage 28
Shiso and chocolate chip ice cream sandwich 11

See their wine list here

 

TOMO will have seating for 28 inside and a few more outside on the deck which will be largely enclosed for winter and have heaters.

"Art will be a big part of TOMO," Williams said. "My business partner had an art gallery here for a number of years and was a collector so the art will be seasonal, like the food, with things like sculptural glass, textile pieces, and a really beautiful copper sculpture."

Tomo will be open for dinner from 5pm to 9pm Thursday through Sunday and 11am to 2pm for lunch on the weekends, featuring a la carte items. Al a carte items will also be available at the bar. The bar will offer more than 200 different wines.

A quarter of those wines will be made by female vintners.

TOMO is truly about fine dining and the people he has selected reflect that too.

Williams will be joined by Diana Mata Garcia (also formerly with Canlis) as chef de cuisine, and by pastry chef Richard Garcia (not related). The Bar Manager is Greg Bonney, and the Wine Director is Andy Comer.

From a core of five, TOMO will employ around 12 full and part time people.

The team at TOMO is working offsite as the build out continues, "developing ideas and templates" with some recipes about to enter the testing stage. "I have years worth of recipes that are tried and true," explained Williams, "but then we also cook very intuitively, and I think that's going to be a lot of what we do."

It's more experiential than by rote.

And that also matches his choice of White Center as a location. Its diversity is its strength.

"It's a team of specialists and I think White Center is a neighborhood of specialists in a lot of ways."