Union Saloon sits on Wallingford Avenue North, the work of chef-owner Michelle Magidow. She came up through some of Seattle's known kitchens and dining rooms — as Armandino Batali's sous-chef at Salumi, then through Harvest Vine, into a front-of-house role at Jonathan Sundstrom's Lark, and as a partner at Lark's sister bar Licorous. A stretch at Delancey, working alongside Brandon Pettit and Molly Wizenberg, shaped her sense of what a neighborhood restaurant should feel like. Union Saloon is her version of it: the kind of corner bar she'd want to be a regular at.
The menu splits into dinner and cocktails, a separate wine and beer list, and weekend brunch. The kitchen has built a reputation around elevated comfort food, with a fried chicken that regulars point to as the standout, and brunch has become enough of a draw that people treat it as a destination rather than a stop on the way to something else.
The name plays on old saloon imagery, and the restaurant keeps a Mark Twain line about fortune knocking at a saloon door as its own bit of house lore. It's built a following among neighborhood regulars who come as much for the atmosphere as the food.
The menu splits into dinner and cocktails, a separate wine and beer list, and weekend brunch. The kitchen has built a reputation around elevated comfort food, with a fried chicken that regulars point to as the standout, and brunch has become enough of a draw that people treat it as a destination rather than a stop on the way to something else.
The name plays on old saloon imagery, and the restaurant keeps a Mark Twain line about fortune knocking at a saloon door as its own bit of house lore. It's built a following among neighborhood regulars who come as much for the atmosphere as the food.