Wil Yee, Carrie Benn, Benjamin Jury, and Joshua Cooper are the principals at Duo's which is opening on Avalon Way in September with a casual, small plate offering of food, and a full bar. The three year old company provides catering to many Seattle area corporations but this is their first venture as a restaurant.
An established catering company whose clients include Nucor Steel and other major corporations in the area is taking over the space at 2940 Avalon Way and will open in approximately three weeks or late September according to the owners. The 4300 square foot space was last home to the Avalon Restaurant which closed in early February.
The business is primarily driven by catering, run by four people and this is their first venture into a restaurant together. The owner/operators are Wil Yee, Carrie Benn, Benjamin Jury, and Joshua Cooper.
Yee said, "I've cooked all my life. My grandma had 13 kids so we learned to eat pretty well. I am Chinese but born in the Philippines I can speak and understand both languages and am trained in both cuisines. When I graduated from the SCA "Seattle Culinary Academy" years ago I new I needed to learn and craft some new cuisines that were different from my own. I worked at the Ruins catering with them for 2 years and then worked at Osteria La Spiga for 6 years under Chef Sabrina Tinsley mastering the art of Emilia Romagna cuisine."
Joshua Cooper said it was likely that they would be open in the evenings as a restaurant and be, "a smaller tapas kind of place." You can get a good idea of the kind and style of food they serve from their website www.duoscatering.com . Cooper said, "I pretty much grew up in a kitchen with my dad as a chef."
"We want it to be a comfortable neighborhood place. We want people to feel like they came come in here and feel like its their own living room," Cooper said.
They will have a full bar and Jury said, "Eventually it will be like one big lounge with couches and chairs, comfortable seating. We'll have big screen TV's and you can come in and watch the game. We'll have the outside available for the summertime. We'll have a place for dogs to hook up their leash and bike racks out there to make it neighborhood friendly.
The large kitchen will make a big difference for the company who up to now have used commercial commissary kitchens in Ballard and elsewhere.
They have a crew of friends and family working now to get the space ready for guests.
Yee started Duos about 3 years ago "with Josh and Ben" and is "pretty excited that all the hard work has finally led us to a perfect space for us to grow and in such an awesome charming neighborhood. We hope to do something different in terms of food and our style of service with a very chill lounge atmosphere. We are so excited and ready to get this going."
