Mark Fuller Closes Ma’ono, Re-Opens the Admiral Benbow Room


Mark Fuller will reopen the Admiral Benbow Space this 7 days, lighting up a new era for the pirate-themed bar that is been a West Seattle landmark since 1950. The chef states it’s typically coincidence that his new area debuts approximately a week following he shut his flagship cafe, Ma‘ono, for very good.
Yep, a lot to unpack there. Let us start out with a farewell to Ma’ono. Fuller’s motives for closing aren’t exactly a surprise. “It’s just so challenging to uncover cooks and keep a kitchen area team and continue to keep men and women making the most of their positions just about every working day,” he suggests. The anxiety no for a longer period feels worthwhile in a pursuit that is supposed to satisfy him creatively. Not long ago he discovered a purchaser and achieved a position in which he can explain this transition as bittersweet. “I’m ready to transfer ahead and just keep heading.”
Transferring forward has constantly been a hallmark of Fuller’s first restaurant. In 2008 he first opened the restaurant at 4437 California Ave SW as Spring Hill, the type of exquisite Northwest destination cafe very good more than enough to land its youthful owner on the James Beard Awards’ semifinalist list, not to mention the go over of Food stuff and Wine. Half a decade later on, eating places skewed more informal, and Fuller created a daring choice. He get rid of Spring Hill’s extravagant format to rebrand the restaurant as Ma’ono Fried Hen and Whisky. He put in his cult fried chicken as the centerpiece and embraced his household roots in Hawaii with dishes like saimin noodles and fried hen musubi.
These were the innocent days when we didn’t however use the phrase “pivot.” But Ma’ono’s meals felt like it experienced been waiting around for us all alongside. “It labored,” states Fuller. “Until it did not.”
A longtime West Seattle resident, he subsequently extra much more relaxed places, like the pizza bar Supreme and a new technology of New Luck Toy. He took about the Benbow Place past August, becoming the most up-to-date proprietor of a a few-chambered piratically inclined place that harbors the again end of a Spanish galleon crafted into one particular of its rooms. “It’s a West Seattle staple,” he claims by way of rationalization. “It is really historic.”


The Benbow usually takes its identify from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. It reportedly opened in 1950 and website visitors have since recognised it for the rum beverages and an unconventional in-flooring koi pond. By the time Mudhoney filmed an early new music movie here, the Benbow experienced achieved storied dive bar status.
Fuller remembers his dad—a disc jockey pre-parenthood—telling him tales about this bar. “All the radio stations were on Harbor Island and they would all occur up below and dangle out at the Benbow.”
It’s weathered a couple versions of its identify (and a single unanticipated stint serving Midwestern consolation foodstuff) but Fuller has re-christened it the Admiral Benbow Space. He used the past year restoring the very best parts of a bar that has at instances resembled a pre-Computer Disney motion picture. The ship sparkles. So do the doubloons embedded in the bar leading. Chainsaw artist Tomas Vrba sculpted a skeletal pirate dubbed Billy Bones. The defunct koi pond is consigned to the shipwreck of historical past.
The room provides a combine of online games (pinball, skee-ball), a shipside cocktail lounge, and nightly DJ sets in the main room. The chef that as soon as presided over Spring Hill now owns a bar with pull tabs. The slushy and draft cocktails should really appear acquainted to lovers of Supreme’s bar offerings, but Fuller suggests to retain expectations in examine when it arrives to the foods. “Right now we’re just doing incredibly hot canines.”
He is barely the only restaurateur embracing bars above dining establishments right now. But Ma’ono isn’t long gone for superior. The counters inside of Rachel’s Ginger Beer spots live on (next up: re-opening the a single on Capitol Hill). Fuller’s making a commissary within the cavernous Benbow room. He’ll promote individuals outstanding fried chicken sandwiches and hen fingers for delivery only, getting a David Chang-ian swerve into cloud kitchen territory. “Eventually we may well provide them inside the Benbow,” says Fuller.
Meanwhile, a fledgling website and Instagram account will soon offer specifics on the opening and long run music schedules.
