After six years, the award-winning chef Edouardo Jordan will finally close his original Ravenna restaurant. salt, on the 3rd of July. Jordan did the announcement on Instagram, expressed appreciation for the hugely successful run, which included a James Beard Award win and numerous critical raves, but noted that the challenges of the pandemic over the past year ultimately led to the difficult decision. „We did everything we could to overcome the hurdles, but I felt like I lost my own voice for a moment,” he wrote. „When the pandemic broke out, I knew something big had to happen for Salare to survive.” The chef’s other renowned restaurant in the neighborhood, June baby, stays open.
A native of Florida, Jordan opened Salare in June 2015 after completing an apprenticeship at prestigious French Laundry and Per Se restaurants, along with a number of high profile Seattle kitchen assignments, including Matt Dillon’s Bar Sajor. The Ravenna restaurant blended techniques from the chef’s fine dining training with influences from West Africa and the cuisine of the South, which Jordan had cherished since childhood. Not the skill and innovation that went into his carefully prepared dishes only quickly convinced local critics, but also the aspiring star chef on the national m.
„Salare is my baby, but the mother, with whom I could flex my muscles as a cook and where I avoided the typing as a” black chef „who only cooked soul food,” wrote Jordan on Instagram when he announced the closure.
The Salare excitement also helped make the route along 65th Avenue NE in Ravenna a culinary destination in its own right and open even more doors to Jordan. In 2017, two years after Salare opened, the chef made his debut with his mega-popular restaurant June baby down the block, where he interpreted Mediterranean comfort dishes in his own way, including a popular roast chicken dinner on Sundays. Jordan took home two James Beard Awards in 2018: one for his work at Salare and one for Best New Restaurant (JuneBaby).
But the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have taken their toll, despite the chef’s best efforts to adapt. As early as March 2020, when the interior area was completely closed, Jordan Salare transformed as part of the Aid program for restaurant workers, serves free take-away meals to restaurant employees who have been laid off or experienced significant working hours reductions. He also quickly established robust take-away programs in his two Ravenna restaurants. In keeping with his penchant for culinary storytelling, the Salare’s takeaway items traced the history and influences of African cuisine around the world, complete with Spotify playlists.
The salare takeaway offer will continue for the next several weeks until the restaurant closes permanently. But his sibling has big plans for the summer. A day before Salare was announced that it would close, Jordan said JuneBaby would be shut down on Nov.
Eater Seattle has contacted Jordan for additional comments and will update this post as more information comes in.
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