Sneak Peek: Toulouse Petit restaurant

Toulouse Petit is going to be a one-of-a-kind restaurant for Seattle. Even today, several weeks before 120-seater opens, the handcrafted New Orleans-inspired dining room is an eye-opener. Built on the site of a former dry cleaning shop and the long gone Choy’s Chinese Cuisine in lower Queen Anne, construction has been going on for almost a year, and it shows. The mosaic floor has 85,000 hand cut tiles. Tall windows (712 panes in all) swing open, Big Easy-style, so that the restaurant will be open to the sidewalk in summer and passersby may even covet your corn and tasso ham maque choux. The thick plaster walls were hand-colored and applied in creams, blue and greens so that they are full of hills and valleys, like a huge Impressionist oil painting. Handmade ironwork is everywhere and the art glass lights were created by a glassblowing instructor at Pratt. All this in a restaurant that is being created to be welcoming and a whole lot of fun, like that Louisiana town.

New Orleans is in many ways a quirky city and that shows up in Toulouse’s décor too. The Enochian alphabet from the 1500’s, a crypt and voodoo symbols for prosperity and well being are inlaid into wood dinner tables, giving you something to ponder at while you’re sipping Bourbon Milk Punch for breakfast.

Chef Eric Donnelly, who worked at Sazerac and Oceanaire, has a menu of New Orleans and French foods for breakfast, lunch and dinner, all with a good dose of his house made charcuterie.  Fried Chicken and House-made Andouille Sausage Gumbo, ‘Barbequed’ Shrimp New Orleans Over Creamy Grits, Red Beans and Rice, and Duck and Pork Rillettes with shallots and cognac are some likely entrees. Desserts are sounding good too with a Butterscotch Banana Cream Pie and some rich bread puddings. And in keeping with these paycheck-challenged times, most of the menu is about $6-$20.

The bar, set up by Shing Chen of the now-departed Ovio Bistro, will have lots of Northwest spirits like Dry Fly gin, Voyager gin and Pacifique absinthe. Along with the usual vodkas, bourbons and gins, he’s bringing in a good selection of aperitifs including the hard-to-find Dolin from France. They’ll have traditional New Orleans cocktails – Sazeracs, Ramos fizzes, Bloody Marys, Kir Royales - and they’ll jazz drinks up with both Peychaud bitters and local bartender Miles Thomas’s artisan Scrappy’s Bitters.

Chen also tasted 1,500 wines to find the 150 or so bottles that will make it to the wine list. Although the list is still a company secret, it will be well-populated with Washington and Oregon wines.

When will we have a chance to try all this out? Owner Brian Hutmacher, who also owns Peso’s Kitchen and Lounge, says the restaurant will open in a few weeks, after permits are signed off and the new staff is trained.

Toulouse Petit, 601 Queen Anne Avenue N. in the lower Queen Anne neighborhood.