Salted Sea: Seafood & Raw Bar

Loved this place. Went in today for lunch had some great oysters and a few nice sandwiches.
Will definitely be coming back!

Wow — Unilocal has this wrong — this place is great. Why it is almost empty at brunch is beyond me. I had a great eggs Benedict with fried oysters. Perfect hollandaise and then also perfectly poached eggs. I didn’t get the use of French bread but it worked. Both my children had the French toast which they loved. Service was perfect and ambiance really nice. Would definitely go back!

Happy hour is over at 5!!! Happy hour is over at 5??? Clearly this place doesn’t cater to people like me. The raw oysters were pretty amazing, and the crab cake was quite tasty. Our waitdude, not so much. I asked what was good on the menu and he indicated the whole section we were looking at. We finished most of our food before he checked in and didn’t give us the tab until we stacked all of our plates. When we mentioned the next place we were going, he was judgy. PS — not busy when we visited.

Oysters are perfectly served! The atmosphere is adorable, wood «sea» feeling. I like sitting at the bar during their great happy hour! Salted Sea is a go-​to spot.

First off, went here due to hour long waits at near by establishments. 3 – 4 tables filled should have tipped us off. Service was very slow. Waited an hour once we ordered for our mediocre food. Brioche strawberry French toast was dry and maybe had 1 strawberry sliced that looked old, plus had to wait for syrup by the molasses paced staff. Crab Benedict was like canned crab served on a French bread slice, accompanied by undercooked hash browns. When it came time to pay I had to carry the bill to the waitstaff and they didn’t even get it split right as I directed and the wait staff came over again to ask how to split the bill.
We will never go here again…

I went to this restaurant for HH yesterday with my BF. We loved this restaurant. I only give it a 4 instead of a 5 because we had one dish that wasn’t up to par… ONLY ONE! Everything else, food, décor, plating, service, all stellar. Definitely a must try restaurant.
We had the HH raw oysters and loved the mignonette with cilantro and lime that came on top of it. The oysters were already cut away in the shell so sucking them down included the oyster, brine, and the mignonette. Very tasty. At a dollar each, what a bargain.
The only dish we didn’t care for was the Octopus Croquettes. They were kind of mealy tasting and were cold/​frozen in the middle. Everything else was excellent.
We recommend the calamari (nice sweet/​spicy sauce on the bottom of the plate), sticky chicken wings, and the Spicy Green Curry Mussels. We asked for bread which came hot and with butter and then proceeded to soak up that wonderful green curry sauce.
Excellent place. A must do in seattle!

Amazing and unique seafood. The selection is tidy and diverse. I like that. My highlight was the calamari (who doesn’t love deep fried goodness with sweet chili sauce) the sautéed Greene were bomb! The service was on key and very prompt didn’t have to wait for anything start to finish. Great location to next to our concert venue. Overall is be back and is try everything I didn’t have this time. I’ll probably get the calamari again

If you like oysters
Happy hour $ 1.00 minter sweet oyster shooters
The best in Seattle

I really wanted to love this place, I had this restaurant bookmarked for weeks and I came in here with very high expectation that quickly fell short. My friend and I came here the day before my birthday to grab some food and to catch up before my hectic weekend. The staff here was really nice and friendly but the food was just not up to par.
We ordered a half dozen oysters, half Kumamoto and half minter sweet select, grilled romaine, Rockefeller oysters, grilled octopus, and spicy green curry mussels. The raw oysters didn’t come with any accompanying sauce and that was quite a disappointment. My friend had to ask for extra sauce and such. The Rockefeller oyster was a huge let down, they came out cold. Didn’t even look baked at all and when my friend went to eat one she immediately spit it out because the oyster was so slimy and had a weird fishy taste to it. We got it sent back because I sure wasn’t going to try it after that. The grilled octopus and spicy curry mussels would have been amazing if they weren’t so bland. They both were so bland even the spicy curry mussels, there was no flavor or spices what so ever. Our meal was quite a let down but I still gave this place a three star for the staff and their service. It was a good place to try but I definitely don’t think I’ll be coming back. There’s just other places I really rather go too.

Brunch review: Came here for brunch because I had eaten dinner here before and liked it. Also Geraldine’s had 30 people waiting outside at brunch.
Not sure why there was no one eating brunch here on a Saturday. The food is really good.
The rock fish congee is awesome. We had pear and butter lettuce salad too and it was very delicious. I would recommend coming here for brunch. The salt and vinegar potatoes over the hash browns though.
They do good potatoes here and have a kids menu.
I want to try the late night happy hour next as my old favorite late night happy hour place has been on the decline.
Maybe the sign outside should have bigger fonts to call out brunch as it’s farther down the street from the other brunch places.

Some friends that live in Seattle took my husband and I here, while we were visiting. We dug the utilization of fresh local ingredients. Lunch was good. The fried oysters were great!

Bad experience through and through. Although it looked promising because of the great reviews, the stylish interior, and the happy hour; I left disappointed, and surprisingly still hungry.
We started with the chicken wings and the calamari. I must say the wings were tasty, however, this is a seafood restaurant, and their poultry was the only thing on the menu that made any sense. The calamari came pre-​sauced in their house sauce which made the breading start to fall off and become soggy.
Now for the oysters, they only have one kind available for the happy hour, and they are the smallest oysters I’ve gotten thus far in Seattle. They too, like the calamari, come already pre-​sauced with their mignonette, but no lemon, you must ask for that. The problem with this is that the oysters are lazily plated so that the mignonette pours out by the time they get to you, a lot of my oysters came dry, not even a drop of seawater. Also, thanks to the shucker, about half of the three dozen oysters we ordered had shells in them. I’m talking pieces of shell bigger than my pinky nail. I was scared to keep eating them out of fear of chipping my teeth.
Never coming to this place again, left wanting to go to a different restaurant to get the taste out of my mouth, so I went across the street for gelatto.

Went here with my friend to go visit another friend who works here. Walked in and sat at the bar. Ordered Capone’s Hat, shrimp toast, calamari and raw oysters. The capone’s Hat drink was really yummy. The mixture of spirits was well balanced.
The shrimp toast, at first I was wondering where is my shrimp?, but once I got bit into a piece of cheesy, shrimpy, crunchy goodness I was satisfied. The calamari was not overly fried and you can taste how fresh it is. The raw oysters were amazing. I would definitely recommend this place and will be back again

For me nothing compares to dining at an aesthetically pleasing Restaurant with exceptional food. I found this place to be very trendy and well designed.
Unfortunatley, the food was not exceptional. I did not enjoy anything that we ordered. I was expecting a more extensive raw selection, considering the name of the restaurant. However, the menu was not reflective of the branding. I repeat nothing was good. I would recommend this place for cocktails on the weekend. For a group of people to get out, and enjoy a nice ambience and cocktails perhaps. I cannot recommend this, the cocktails were not great either.
The oysters we’re not plated well. There were no desirable pairings for the oysters, very odd. For example, Ettas near pike place market serves their oysters with a savory champagne mignotte. This place had no such thing. I had to ask for lemon, salt and pepper. I was not impressed by this. I also had the crab cake s and they were cold and flavorless. (More cake than crab for sure.)
On more than one occasion I drove by this place and anticipated coming in to try the food. I was disappointed for sure.

This place deserves five freaking stars.
BF and I came for happy hour on Saturday night. We were a bit early but they sat us anyway. We decided to order drinks and pan fried oysters off the regular menu. We basically went to town on the HH menu. What we ordered: raw oysters, shrimp toast, frites, crispy calamari, coconut pork belly banh mi, and octopus croquettes.
Literally everything was good. My least favorite were the oysters, so that says a lot about the rest of the food. The mignonette on the oysters was light but the subtle sweetness was just enough. I especially enjoyed the octopus croquettes. They were like takoyaki except the exterior was crisp and crunchy. The accompanying lime mayo was delicious! The calamari was really tender but I agree with the other Unilocalers that the batter could have been crispier. The pork belly in the banh mi was so good and the bread was perfectly toasted. It was so light and crispy.
Dessert was on point — sticky banana cake with toffee drizzle and crème fraîche. It was PERFECT. I now believe that all sticky toffee pudding should have banana in it. God it was good.
We had hella food and 3 drinks (two of which were non HH), and the bill only came out to be $ 88. Service was so nice too, cheery and genuine. We’ll be back!

Oysters, oysters, oysters! I wanted to say this was a great raw bar addition to Columbia City and have been meaning to try this place forever but it came out disappointing not because of the food so much but because the service here is horrible.
We ordered the grilled romaine — grilled perfectly with a char and still crispy at the same time. The romaine was dressed well and tasted delicious! The Kumamoto and Shigoku oysters were good! One had a jelly on top and tasted more like salt water than the other. I think it needed a better sauce to go on top. The oysters were fairly small though — but that’s normal for this type of oysters. The frites with the oyster aioli was crisp and delicious! The clams had a good broth to it but again small — which is again probably normal for the season. I thought the food was good, nothing spectacular but good and I had no complaints.
However, the service. Our server overcharged us so look at your bill carefully. She charged us for 2 soups, instead of 1 and 3 orders of frites instead of 2. We pointed it out and she decided to give us free oysters for the difference (per our request) since we already settled and signed the bill. We then found out it was happy hour and decided to stay for more food. The server put the HH menu on our table and ignored us. We finally put our order in and waited an hour for our order to come out. For which she «forgot» to put in our oyster order and didn’t provide us with any silverware.
The happy hour minter sweet select oysters were actually pretty good! Nice flavors and a good vinaigrette to top it off. Worth it at $ 1/​piece. U fortunately it took over 1.5 hrs to come out but the new guys gave them to us for half off. So when did our server leave and they changed staff?! She didn’t even inform us that this was happening. I know they tried to compensate for the things that went wrong but who makes that many mistakes on one table in a night?! Especially since there was no one there on a Saturday evening! There was maybe 1 – 2 other parties besides us so they definitely weren’t busy!
We ordered the chicken wings, which were a good crisp and flavor. The crispy calamari had a good sauce but definitely wasn’t crispy enough. The green curry mussels were plump and the green curry broth was delicious. For dessert we had the Vietnamese coffee flan which was thicker in consistency but a good flavor. I liked it. The sticky banana cake was interesting but not my favorite. The tart butter toffee sauce didn’t go with the banana cake.
I also ordered a mule and it wasn’t as gingery as I’d like. I think it was also lacking alcohol and content. Definitely not the best mule I’ve had — not even close.
I would have given this place a 3.5 for food and probably a 1.5 for service. I think it would’ve been better if they worked out the kinks in service because waiting so long for orders is pretty unacceptable.

Overall, I give Salted Sea a solid 3.5 star rating. I’m bumping it up to 4 stars because they’re still new. Though it wasn’t perfect, the customer service was friendly and I enjoyed their happy hour (daily from 3 pm — 5 pm). It’s also hard to beat $ 1 oysters on a half shell.
Across from Tutta Bella in Columbia City, Salted Sea has a modern atmosphere. This is probably the type of place you would see in Ballard or Fremont, but located in South Seattle.
**HH eats I would order again**
–Dark & Stormy ($ 7): Rum, ginger beer, and lime cocktail. Tart and slightly bitter, but refreshing.
–Green Curry Mussels (~$ 7): The mussels were plump, and the coconut curry sauce was light but delicious. Bread is a must to soak up all it’s goodness.
–Oysters on a half shell ($ 1 /​each): Small, briney, clean flavored oysters that seemed to be dress with lemon already. The only thing missing was horse radish.
–Garlic (BBQ) Chicken Wings ($ 7-​$ 8): This was a pretty good version of the salty/​sweet Vietnamese style BBQ wings. It came out hot and crispy, with the sauce being finger-​licking good!
**“Just Ok” Eats (that I might not order again)**
–Frites (Fries) with oyster infused mayo
–Coconut Pork Belly Sliders
–Shrimp Toast
Overall, the servers were friendly, which is a plus. Salted Sea doesn’t offer regular menu items during HH, so you have to wait to try out their regular menu. The HH portion sizes are also fairly small, so don’t expect to get full quickly. However, some of their flavors were on point, and I would probably come back for HH.

A great find.
The dishes we ordered tonight were incredibly delicious and perfectly prepared. Service was friendly and responsive. Salted Sea has an extremely comfortable «Northwest» ambience, highlighted by the plank/​driftwood sculpture hanging by the front door. We loved the big windows looking out onto Rainier. The background music was a pleasant, non-​obtrusive style played at a satisfactory volume.
We made reservations thru Open Table, but on this particular night there were plenty of open tables, and a reservation was unnecessary. Salted Sea has a full bar (and there’s a Happy Hour). I noticed that the two TV monitors over the bar were off (which is perfectly fine in my book).
Salted Sea’s website indicates that there’s a Vietnamese influence on their cuisine. Well, that’s obviously a very good influence, as we enjoyed each dish immensely. We started out with the Pan-​Fried Oysters. The oysters were perfect golden brown in appearance. Resting atop a mild horseradish crème fraîche, the fresh and plump oysters were topped with slivers of a nice pickled garlic gremolata. Gremolata is a condiment comprised of parsley, garlic and a touch of lemon zest.
Also as a starter, we ordered the ceviche. This was different than any other ceviche I had ever seen. The ceviche was a clump of white fish in the center of the bowl, topped with a leafy green that I could not identify, and encircled by slices of crostini bread. The a-​little-​bit tangy tumeric/​lime flavor of the ceviche’s light sauce was outstanding. The fish in the ceviche was very fresh.
For my entrée, I ordered the trout. It was excellent. Like the fried oysters, the trout came out with a perfect golden crust. The trout, fresh like all our other dishes, was huge. This was the first time I’ve seen trout with pink meat. Accompanying the trout were delicious confit chanterelle mushrooms, thin crescent-​shaped apple slices and a lacinato kale.
My favorite dish of the night was the oyster stew. While called a stew, it was really more like a soup. In any case, the stew containing tiny cubes of potatoes was so, so amazingly tasty. I couldn’t get enough of it! Hopefully, this dish will make frequent appearances on Salted Sea’s specials menu, or even find its way to the regular menu.
For such truly «Top Chef» cuisine, I found Salted Sea’s prices surprisingly reasonable. I highly recommend Salted Sea, and you can be sure we’ll be back!

I came here for brunch on a Saturday morning, and it was pretty empty inside. I was hoping it was just because Salted is somewhat new still, but… that might not be the case. I got the brioche french toast. While it tasted delicious — loved the fall flavor with the vanilla poached pears and smoked butter, it was super soggy! Too much syrup or pear juice? Which kind of ruined the experience. My husband got the Columbia City Fry. It came with three yummy, fried oysters but the omelet itself wasn’t anything special. just had some bacon and onions, and the portion was on the small side. Overall, food was okay, but we just didn’t leave with happy, satisfied bellies.
I most likely won’t return or recommend for brunch, but I wouldn’t be opposed to trying out the $ 1 oysters happy hour! Daily from 3−5pm and varying night hours too.

T’was my first night back in Seatown and I was meeting up with someone very special. I had heard the Buzz about this new joint and was ready to chow down on some amazing Seafood and pick an impressive place. After being seated for 15 minutes the party next to us Got up Chuckled (bitterly) a bit and said «ENJOY WAITING A WEEK FOR YOUR FOOD, WE ARE OUTTA HERE», and they left without eating.
We were hungry and right as we seated we ordered everything and told em to bring it as it comes out. Well we should of taken the advice that was told to us. In total we waited about 2 hours for this food, it was ridiculous. However, After half an hour at least the Oysters had come. To top it off when it finally came our waitress had messed up our order. She came to check on us once in that two hours and appeared to be in a bad mood as well as she was a a bit rude.
So what did we eat when the food finally did come? Some Raw oysters (only two kinds were available not the kinds we wanted unfortunately) They were decent I wonder what the others would have been like. The fish and chips which was recommended to us by the Waitress was not really all that good, don’t recommend. The smoked trout salad was alright, but very small. Portions for the most part are small here. The whole roasted Trout I ordered just because I figured it would be the biggest thing on the menu and we were hungry (ESPECIALLY AFTER all that waiting). It was honestly ok, but definitely not worth the wait at all.
Ambience: Pretty filled, and definitely loud. If you are looking for a quiet spot look elsewhere.
Overall, I would say the only way I would even consider recommending this place is if you go during happy hour or when it is not with people, or maybe when they hire more staff? you are better off going next door to Spice Room which is great if you are in the area. And it’s not cheap, so no brownie points there either. We were pretty disappointed. I rarely ever give just One Star but the service here was outright a joke and terrible.
Moreover, I know of no Sea that isn’t Salted, but maybe this place needs some changes in their staff and needs to up the Salt a bit.