When Peter Canlis chose the south end of the Aurora Bridge as the site for his new Seattle restaurant, the location was considered "way out of town." The year was 1949, and Canlis had recently arrived in Seattle from Hawaii, where he opened his first restaurant, The Broiler, in 1947. The son of a Greek father and Lebanese mother, Canlis's addition to Seattle’s restaurant offerings was a bold foray that melded influences from his family roots, his time in Hawaii, and elements from his new Pacific Northwest home. His approach to hospitality was savvy, and his gregarious, perfectionist personality was a big part of the Canlis experience in the restaurant’s first few decades. Canlis became the epitome of a special-occasion restaurant while also catering to devoted regulars, many of whom had a standing weekly reservation. After Peter Canlis died in 1977, his son Chris and Chris's wife Alice helmed the restaurant for 30 years. Since 2007 Peter Canlis's grandsons Mark and Brian have been leading the restaurant, which will mark its 75th year in December 2025.
Peter's Vision
Nicholas Peter Canlis was born in Sacramento, California, in 1913 to parents Nicholas and Susan. He grew up in Stockton, where his parents had opened their restaurant The Food Palace and Fish Grotto in 1910. This settling-down came after an adventurous spell for Peter’s father. As shared on the Canlis restaurant website, family lore tells of the elder Canlis having met Teddy Roosevelt in Cairo, and joining him on the Smithsonian-Roosevelt African Expedition as a cook while the expedition collected specimens in rural Africa for the Smithsonian Institution.
Peter Canlis left Stockton in 1939, determined to make his own way in the world and not follow his parents’ footsteps into the restaurant business. He traveled from California to Hawaii in 1939, where he initially sold shoes and then dry goods. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he ran foodservice operations at the USO facilities in Honolulu, in part, as the story goes, because he’d griped about the quality of the food being served in that cafeteria. Someone proposed that if he thought he could do better he should give it a try. And he did. After the war was over, Canlis opened his first restaurant, The Broiler, on Waikiki Beach in 1947. That initial, rather casual, venture closed in 1953, Canlis opening his more elegant Canlis' Charcoal Broiler nearby in 1954.
Among clientele at his Honolulu restaurant were a number of Seattleites, some of whom encouraged him to pay a visit. Canlis fell in love with the city, soon imagining a new restaurant there. He found a perfect location north of downtown on Aurora Avenue just south of the Aurora Bridge, with a vision for making something special on a hilly perch above Lake Union. One hitch was that the piece of land was owned by well-established restaurateur Walter Clark (1896-1990). Canlis met with Clark to share what he envisioned for his luxury restaurant. His charismatic personality and the clarity of his vision earned the support of Clark, who had no immediate plans for the land. Clark helped the younger restaurateur secure the property, and the two went on to become close friends.
Clark also helped introduce Canlis to Seattle’s well-to-do, helping set the stage for this audacious venture soon to be unfolding. "He reveled in telling them a meal at Canlis' would cost $10 – an unheard-of amount at that time – boasting that the high-priced menu and service would be well worth whatever he charged" (Mr. Restaurant, 152).
Young architect Roland Terry (1917-2006) had worked only on residential projects before being tapped to help design the building. As Peter’s grandson Mark Canlis stated in 2019, "My grandfather told the architect to design the most beautiful restaurant in the world but said it must feel like a home" ("This James Beard ..."). This was a distinct shift from the opulence and grandeur on display in fine dining restaurants of the time. Peter Canlis's directive served not only as an ethos for the type of restaurant he wished to create, it had a literal application as well. Canlis lived in a penthouse on the upper level of the restaurant for the first few years, where today there is a private event space. Terry, as part of the firm Tucker, Shields & Terry, worked on his Canlis plans in collaboration with the Honolulu firm Wimberly & Cook, which had worked with Peter Canlis on his Honolulu restaurant. The Northwest Modern design he expressed is one of the restaurant's most prominent hallmarks across more than seven decades.
The restaurant interior used local cedar for the beams and granite quarried from the Cascades for the support columns. Canlis imbued some elements from his time in Hawaii as well, such as Polynesian wood carvings, tropical prints, and flowers flown in regularly from the Islands. In 1956, sculptor George Tsutakawa created his first commissioned sculpture for Canlis: the distinctive carved wood handles of the front door. And just outside the northeast corner of the building, diners today see the Lebanese Cedar tree that Peter Canlis planted in honor of his mother.
Familiar and Exotic
At its opening on December 11, 1950, the Canlis menu selections included a mix of the familiar and exotic from both land and sea. Among seafood offerings were fresh Olympia oyster cocktail, steamed clams, salmon, and Hawaiian mahi-mahi. Meat options included lamb shish kebab, whole squab, and a number of steak options. The "Gargantuan Baked Idaho Potato" with toppings (butter, Parmesan cheese, green onions, bacon) had been on the Honolulu menu and became one of the signatures of the restaurant. Canlis prioritized a sophisticated experience in the lounge as well, having attained one of the state's first licenses to serve liquor by the drink.
Within a few years, the cachet of Canlis was becoming clear. The restaurant was name-dropped in a 1953 fashion column about a visiting pianist performing in town, telling of the Christian Dior dress she’d be wearing at a private luncheon being held in her honor at Canlis. In his 1955 book You Can’t Eat Mount Rainier, Bill Speidel wrote of Canlis, "Although often a controversial figure – he is a dedicated perfectionist – no one denies he has reached a pinnacle in décor, service, and taste." He cited Canlis to be "a trend-setter that has added much to our city’s gourmet culture" (Speidel, 22). A recipe for the now-decades-famous Canlis Salad, a variation on the Caesar, was included in that volume. It’s one menu item that has been available at Canlis consistently since its opening.
There are a great many stories associated with Canlis that date back to the restaurant’s early years. Such as Peter Canlis transporting fish between his Honolulu and Seattle restaurants – mahi-mahi one direction, salmon the other – thanks to friendly flight attendants sneaking the fish onto their flights. And Canlis helping build his name recognition before the restaurant opened by having himself paged at the Washington Athletic Club.
The most persistent of those stories (one still repeated today) may be the rumor that once upon a time, a Canlis diner might find a note on the back of their check, or hear a whisper from the doorman on their way out asking that the patron not return – for reasons said to have included not ordering enough or not dressing stylishly enough. In a 1953 article about the rumor, which began in 1952, Peter Canlis offered $1,000 to anyone able to produce evidence of such a note or request. And in 1971, a newspaper columnist tried to dispel it once and for all in response to a reader question about the supposed practice. In his response, he quotes Peter Canlis as saying, "I swear it never happened," noting that Canlis said he had hired private detectives to try to get to the bottom of the matter. "It always happened to a 'friend of a friend' and we've never found the friend," Canlis said ("The Friend of ...").
Peter Canlis also opened Canlis restaurants in Portland at the Hilton Hotel, and in San Francisco at the Fairmont Hotel. Those restaurants operated, respectively, from 1963 to 1979 and 1965 to 1985. The Honolulu restaurant was open until 1989.
Originally opened with the name of Canlis’ Charcoal Broiler, the Seattle restaurant’s name was later shortened to just Canlis, though the exact timing of the change is uncertain. Peter’s son Chris reflected on how important the inclusion of "charcoal broiler" in the restaurant’s name had been to his father. Having the copper broiler on view in the restaurant was a special feature of which he was proud. As the years went by and the restaurant became well known, he came to realize that people referred to the restaurant simply as Canlis – and eventually the name followed suit.
On July 6, 1977, Peter Canlis died at the age of 64 from lung cancer. After services held at St. Mark’s Cathedral, he was buried in his hometown of Stockton, California. Among remembrances for the man who changed the face of fine dining in Seattle was this in The Seattle Times: "Pete was a much-honored restaurateur. He set a standard of excellence from which he never deviated. He was a friend whose gruff exterior couldn’t hide a soft interior. He will be sorely missed by a lot of friends, who counted any day they saw him a brighter one" ("Stupendous ...").
In November 1977 a fundraising dinner was held at the restaurant to help one of Peter Canlis's wishes come true: "to help others who have – or will have – cancer. And he wanted to do something for Virginia Mason Hospital, which he visited with ever-greater frequency during his last weeks" ("A Night to Remember ..."). The event contributed $150,000 to help fund the 26-bed N. Peter Canlis Cancer Care Unit that was dedicated in September 1979. By one account, actor John Wayne, a frequent guest at Canlis, was the first to make a donation.
Turning Points
Chris Canlis had worked in the restaurant some as a teenager, and also worked part-time at the San Francisco location while studying at Stanford University. After graduating in 1967, he joined the Navy, becoming a pilot and flight instructor. He met his future wife while based in Pensacola, Alice’s hometown; they wed in 1971. In 1975, Chris earned an MBA in finance at Stanford and was working in banking in San Francisco when his father became ill. In late 1976, he and Alice moved with their sons to Seattle to join the family business. Upon the death of Peter in 1977, Chris and Alice formally took the reins and led the restaurant for the next 30 years.
Where Peter was a bold character who loved being the center of attention, Chris approached his role at the restaurant quite differently. Reflecting on that contrast in a 1991 article, he said of his father, "He was the star of the show, and people had to adapt to his ways. He was out front all the time. Me, I'm happy to have everyone else out in front." Writer Emmett Watson stated in that same article, "There is not the slightest hint of a slip in quality since Peter ran the restaurant. The menu has changed – drastically – but it has changed so slowly, so subtly, that people scarcely notice" ("A Fine Restaurant ...").
Within a few years of the second Canlis generation being at the helm of the restaurant there was also a generational shift in the kitchen. Joe Ching (1919-2005), who was the lead chef since the restaurant's opening, retired in 1980. Ching had met Peter Canlis in Honolulu, becoming chef of The Broiler before joining Canlis in the move to Seattle. Rocky Toguchi, who had been cooking at the restaurant since 1967, stepped into the lead kitchen role, a role he would have for more than 15 years.
The Canlises found themselves at a crossroads in the 1990s, unsure what the path forward might be for the restaurant. Two articles that appeared in 1994 reflected the challenges of owning a legacy restaurant of such a high caliber.
In spring 1994, one piece extolled the restaurant’s virtues of nostalgia, continuity (a guest celebrating her 40th birthday who had also celebrated her 16th at Canlis), and celebration. As one frequent guest said in the story, "It's the familiarity – the valet parking, the fireplace, the warm greeting, the music. It's looking around and seeing customers and waitresses that you know." There is, however, a hint of internal struggle in the article’s closing, which says, "The owners wouldn't think of tampering with classic menu items such as the Canlis Salad, but to evolve with the times and offer more variety, they replace some entrees. And occasionally they hear about it from customers. 'I tell them that if they'll call me the day before their reservation, we'll fix their old favorites for them,' Chris says" ("Canlis: A Place ...").
It was quite a different story in September 1994, when Canlis received what’s said to be its first negative review. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer food critic Tom Sietsema awarded the restaurant a single star – the equivalent of "fair" in the newspaper's rating system at the time. Having recently come to Seattle from San Francisco, his perspective was uninfluenced by the longtime local affection for Canlis. Invoking the Eisenhower era and such "Continental-style antiquities as steak tartare, vichyssoise and dessert souffles" in the review, he ended with, "While I appreciate tradition as much as anyone, I can’t understand why anyone would pay $75 a person – my average for food, wine, tax and tip on multiple visits – to eat here" ("Tradition Doesn't ...").
Chris and Alice were aware that older established restaurants around the country were becoming something of a dying breed. The year prior they had begun considering options, realizing that, "they would either have to stage a rebirth of their 45-year-old restaurant or retire" ("Fearless ..."). After deciding on the former, they undertook a $2 million restaurant makeover in 1996 that launched a distinctly new era for Canlis. "We had to figure out how to bring the past into the future without letting go of our foundation," Chris Canlis said ("Silver Spoon"). The restaurant closed for a few weeks to accommodate the structural part of the updates, so involved was the undertaking.
Canlis, Reframed
The family’s commitment to carrying the legacy of Peter Canlis forward worked out. In early 1997, a writer said that the most remarkable thing about the remodel was "how much the new Canlis looks and feels like the old Canlis. The original Roland Terry Northwest 'contemporary' design from 1950 hasn’t been tampered with, but – with granite and glass and beams – merely (and quite grandly) augmented. Chris Canlis never intended to re-create the Seattle landmark that his father, Peter Canlis, built. Rather, he said, 'like all the original artwork inside, we reframed it'" ("Forever Canlis ...").
Within a few years the Canlises were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the restaurant. And they celebrated in true Canlis style: with generosity. During the months of October, November, and up to the anniversary of December 11, 2000, one table randomly picked each evening received a copy of the original 1950 menu, and dined at those 1950 prices. They also held a fundraising dinner on December 11 that raised $50,000 for local charities.
In the midst of the renovation came a shift in the kitchen staff. In 1997, Greg Atkinson, then executive chef at Friday Harbor House on San Juan Island, began working as a consulting chef to help update Canlis menus as part of the renovation process. In 1998, Atkinson became executive chef at Canlis, where he stayed until 2002, when Aaron Wright became chef.
In 2007, when Chris and Alice were ready to step away from leading the restaurant, sons Mark (b. 1974) and Brian (b. 1977) teamed up to lead the next chapter. Mark had returned in 2003 from New York, where he’d been working at restaurants such as Danny Meyer’s Union Square Grill, to join the restaurant team with his father and mother. Brian had followed in Mark’s footsteps, both as a graduate of Cornell University School of Hospitality and Restaurant Management and having served in the Air Force. He returned to Seattle in 2005.
When chef Aaron Wright departed Canlis in 2008 for a new opportunity in Napa, California, the brothers faced the first big task of their tenure: finding a new chef. In December 2008, they hired Jason Franey as executive chef. Franey came to Seattle from New York, where he’d been executive sous chef at the lauded Eleven Madison Park. It set off murmurs that the choice might unsettle the continuity that many treasured when dining at Canlis, introducing touches of culinary modernism to a venue so steeped in tradition. In reflecting on the decision to hire Franey, Brian Canlis noted that his grandfather "didn’t serve a menu of classics" when Canlis first opened. "He brought in ingredients no one had seen before. He stretched boundaries." Mark Canlis added that, "All our history prompted people to say we were ruining Canlis when we brought in Jason and changed the food. We called it 'The Great Experiment' because it disconnected the restaurant from some of its relationships. But we thought by staying innovative, we were bringing it back to the way it began, back to its roots" ("At Canlis, Dinner ...").
A review in 2013 would note that Mark and Brian hiring Franey "was their first bold move as the third generation to run the family business. They knew there was a risk of alienating longtime customers, but they had history on their side" ("In An Elegant ..."). In 2009, Seattle Metropolitan magazine wrote that "Seattle’s most legendary restaurant, now going on 60, genuinely keeps getting better," and the food with the new chef Jason Franey was "the best it’s been in years" ("Ten Best ...").
Accolades
Peter Canlis was named the Restaurant Man of the Year in 1961 by the Washington State Restaurant Association, and Canlis was on the Holiday Magazine restaurant award list for many years beginning in 1954. Canlis received other recognitions over the years, but it was in the 2010s that a steady string of accolades began coming the restaurant’s way. In 2011, Franey landed a spot on Food & Wine magazine’s annual list of "Best New Chefs," as would his successor Brady Williams in 2018. That year, Canlis was recognized on the magazine’s list of the 40 restaurants it deemed the most important of the previous 40 years, noting, "While Canlis has been an essential Seattle fine-dining stalwart for over six decades, its greatest strength might be its capacity for reinvention while consistently delivering excellence in service, cuisine, and vision. We don't like to throw around the word 'timeless,' but there's no better word to describe the modernist, Pacific Northwest destination" ("The 40 Most ...").
In 2013, the restaurant received the prestigious Relais & Chateaux designation, currently [2024] the only property in Washington to have such a designation. And after many years of receiving nominations for James Beard awards – which many consider to be the Oscars of the culinary world – Canlis gained its first James Beard award for Outstanding Wine Program in 2017. For as much as the work from the kitchen has been a foundational part of a Canlis dining experience, the restaurant’s wine cellar and stellar sommelier staff have also contributed to its cachet. Wine Spectator magazine has bestowed its highest level of designation, the Grand Award, on Canlis since 1997, one of fewer than 100 restaurants with that honor.
In 2019 Canlis was recognized by the James Beard Foundation with the Design Icon award. In an Architectural Digest item about the award, the award committee chair said, "Canlis has successfully promoted the intimate relationship between dining and design to create an unforgettable experience, and featured a rare sensitivity to design that has preserved and improved this remarkable restaurant" ("This James Beard-winning ..."). That same year, chef Brady Williams receiving the Best Chef: Northwest award from the James Beard Foundation.
Canlis For Everyone
Mark and Brian’s capacity to solve problems and innovate while upholding the legacy of Canlis hospitality plays out in a range of fashions. One example was an evening in October 2021 when, for the first time in the restaurant’s existence, the power went out during dinner service. They turned to another Seattle icon, Dick’s Drive-In, for an order of burgers to offer dinner guests while the kitchen was dark.
Much longer lasting and far more somber was addressing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 16, 2020, Canlis closed its doors to on-site dining, and the same day launched the first of what would come to be about a dozen different models for serving food and providing hospitality despite the daily distresses and uncertainties of the time. The Canlis Drive-Thru kicked things off, guests driving into the parking lot to pick up hamburgers, fries, and ice cream sandwiches. One day later, they launched a breakfast-time bagel pop-up. A day after that, they began deliveries by staff members of what they called the Canlis Family Meal. One early example was a meal of dry-aged beef and pork meatballs, wood-fired brassicas, Canlis salad, herb and asiago Parker House rolls, and tiramisu for dessert. Customers received a note that they could livestream piano from Canlis that evening while enjoying their meal – keeping pianists employed, in addition to the kitchen staff and those delivering the meals.
The parking lot was transformed into a number of different temporary dining venues, from the Crab Shack to a drive-in movie theater to Camp Canlis. They also live-streamed bingo games. In the fall of 2020 they launched Canlis Community College with a six-week curriculum of live-streamed events that ranged from wine and cooking demonstrations and learning about local history from expert guests, to learning the craft of cutting hair at home.
On June 30, 2021, Washington state lifted most of the COVID-related restrictions, making it feasible for restaurants to begin returning to traditional indoor dining. On July 1, 2021, the valets were back, the tables were set, and Canlis's doors opened anew. And there was a new chef in the kitchen, the seventh in the restaurant’s history. In spring 2021 the brothers hired Aisha Ibrahim, the first woman to head up the kitchen. Ibrahim came to Seattle from Thailand, where she’d been most recently working, having cooked in restaurant kitchens in Spain, San Francisco, and Japan prior. As two Canlis chefs before her had, Ibrahim earned a spot on Food & Wine magazine’s best new chef list for 2023. Canlis also hired its first woman wine director, Linda Milagros Violago, in 2021.
The Canlis brothers are not afraid to take bold steps that may surprise, and occasionally confound, customers and the greater community, such as their decision for the summer of 2024 to be open Monday through Friday nights from Memorial Day to Labor Day, which meant being closed Saturday nights. As they explained the decision on Instagram, "It’s an experiment to see what it’s like for our team to enjoy real weekends for a change."
Canlis took an even bolder and brighter step in July 2024 when it had the exterior of the restaurant painted vivid pink. It got everyone’s attention; many thousands of cars drive past Canlis each day. A couple of days after the paint was dry, they announced it as one step in setting the stage for a Barbie-inspired pink-themed party for two nights in August – converting the restaurant into what they called "Kenlis." It was a fundraising effort to support breast cancer care through Fred Hutchinson and Susan G. Komen.
Up next is the restaurant’s 75th anniversary in December 2025. With decades of festivities of many types – elaborate, elegant, inventive, themed, and often generous fundraising elements as well – there is no telling what form that celebration might take.
