Food revolution: Seattle’s Space Needle celebrates 50 years

Gail Bellamy

The Seattle Space Needle’s 50th anniversary will be celebrated in high style at its SkyCity restaurant located at the 500-foot level. The month-long May promotion puts a new spin on the event with its “fresh from the past” menu.  The five-dish tasting menu is priced at $62 (a nod to 1962, the year the Space Needle opened) and features dishes by iconic Seattle chefs who rose to prominence in the decades they represent. Proceeds benefit the favorite charity of each participating chef.

Back in 1962, the Seattle Space Needle’s restaurant was only the second revolving restaurant in the world. Originally named Eye of the Needle, today’s SkyCity restaurant features a rotating14-foot ring next to the restaurant’s windows.  Here’s what Space Needle fans will be eating—five specialties created by five chefs, representing the five decades that the Space Needle has been in existence:

• 1960s: Executive chef Jeff Maxfield of SkyCity at the Needle offers Dungeness Crab en brochette, with house-made bacon, micro chervil and tarragon emulsion.

• 1970s: Chef Shiro, owner/master chef, Shiro’s Sushi Restaurant, has created the Poke Belltown entrée.

• 1980s: Kathy Casey, president/owner of Kathy Casey Food Studios—Liquid Kitchen, will be preparing Fuller’s warm spinach salad with smoked duck, shiitake mushrooms and sesame dressing and housemade sesame crackers with wasabi goat cheese.

• 1990s: Tom Douglas, chef, restaurateur and author, offers aromatic steamed wild salmon, kimchee fried rice and grilled asparagus with star anise and hazelnuts.

• 2000s: Jason Wilson, owner/executive chef at CRUSH, will present Painted Hills strip loin, slow cooked in beef tallow, horseradish “mignonette,” hard-roasted baby vegetables, and porcini bone marrow puree.