Earth & Ocean

SADLY, I came here and they are GONE! There’s some semblance of tables upstairs in the W which is being re-​modeled, but, it looks like a «pulled-​together room service» with card tables.
Yikes…

I came here for a modest birthday dinner a few nights ago with 3 others. I should have checked out their hours because we got there at 9:45 and after we were sat we were told the kitchen closes at 10, yet we were able to order by 9:55 with no hiccups.
This is my 3^rd, maybe 4^th time here. Every visit, I have always been at one of the 1 — 3 occupied tables in the dining room. I basically only come here because they take the Passport card (1 free entrée with a purchase of an entrée) — and I have 2 of those, so for 4 people you can get a somewhat decently priced meal, because this place is definitely pricey.
I do remember there being a rather minimal menu of 8 entrees, some soup and salad choices, and an assortment of appetizers. I prefer more choices since not everything seems like my cup of tea — and I am probably the least picky eater you can imagine (and one of my guests basically can find a problem with anything, however he seemed satisfied with his steak-​ish dish).
I ordered the sea bass. Basically what I got was a rather small portion of seasoned sea bass for $ 28 — which is pretty much everything that was on the plate other than some creamy salad base and some garnishing. I was definitely still very hungry after that. Everyone else at the table also complained about still having a lot more room to eat. We all ended up getting hot dogs on the Hill while we were up there drinking after our meal.
The sea bass itself — it’s my first time having sea bass, but I have had white fish many times and I love it. It tasted very salty. Yes, it comes from the sea so maybe that’s how it’s supposed to taste, but there was definitely a strong salt taste.
The service was good, and the food was prompt. We weren’t ignored for long periods of time and even though we were there close to the time when the kitchen closed, we didn’t feel like we were being rushed at all which is nice to see.
My friend mentioned it was my birthday, so the waitress brought out 4 delicious chocolate cupcakes — 1 for each of us — and mine had a candle on it. My friends started singing Happy Birthday, and the waitress sang along too which I found very sweet.
Overall a satisfying last-​minute birthday dinner, but I probably would have picked somewhere else if more businesses in the area took the Passport card.

My review is based on the Dine Around Seattle lunch deal I took part of the other day.
Lunch was $ 15, plus $ 15 for wine pairings.
At first I was apprehensive about the wines because they all appeared to be from the same winery. For some reason this made me dubious. The winery was Terra something or other. And I guess they are the same as Red Mountain.
First course (5 stars) — Vionier by Terra? This was a little different than I expected as it was pretty dry and not terrible floral on the nose. But it paired well with my delicious pork rillette and pumpkin appetizer «salad» It wasn’t so much a salad as the rillette was served to the side of the «salad» which was a large julienne of raw yellow pumpkin in a creamy horseradish sauce. The rillette was excellent sausage like slices that were tender and not dried out with fresh taragon and parsley on top. The pumpkin strips with sauce was refreshing and went will with the rillette.
Second course (3 stars) — Merlot by Red Mountain was spicy and slightly heavy for a merlot. I liked it but didn’t think it paired well with my food choice which was Penn Cove mussels. Mussels were fresh and the portion size good for lunch. Not sure about the broth. It was a sausage and apple pieces. The broth was sort of cidery/​sour and I didn’t so much want to sop up the broth with my bread because of this. I don’t tend to like sour things.
Third course (5 stars) — Had a great dessert wine that I think the website said was a Sauternes, but the hostess said something else when serving it. It was the Terra? again and it was delicious! I chose the carrot cake. It was 3 little cakes served warm so that it had a bit of a crust, like the piece of brownie from the corner of the pan. The inside was moist and tender. Excellent. Topped with toasted coconut. Next to the cake was some stewed pineapple pieces with a scoop of cream cheese gelato. Yummy! This dessert was really nice and the dessert wine fantastic.
The French baguette slices with butter served with the meal looked great, but I didn’t try it (watching the carbs. I love baguette!!!) My friend seemed to like it though!
Service was friendly and good. Entering the restaurant I was greeted by two people and told someone would be with me soon before being greeted by the hostess who had popped into the back for something. And I only waited a moment (under a minute)
I really enjoyed my lunch and felt it a great value. Not sure what happens at regular price time though…

–sigh— I should have known how empty this restaurant on Friday night indicate the quality of the food. Y_​Y
My man and I stayed at W Seattle and it was just convenient to eat dinner here. The serving staffs were very friendly and nice, but the food was so so for it’s price. My man ordered mid rare for his steak and had to send it back because it was so freaken chewy. Flavor was alright but had expected more for an upscale hotel restaurant.

I was rather disappointed by my meal at Earth & Ocean. All of the dishes had the potential to be good, but every plate had a flavor or component that threw off the balance of the dish as a whole. We had:
— Fennel & Escarole Salad: The most disharmonious dish we had (and unfortunately we both ordered it). The combination of sweet & savory in this dish just didn’t work and the vanilla was overpowering. The cheese didn’t work with the dressing or the lettuces. I ate the pears & cheese off the top and left everything else.
— Caramelized Cauliflower Spaghetti: So bland. The cauliflower was more steamed than caramelized and the sauce didn’t taste like much of anything. The addition of the sweet currants seemed rather out of place to me.
— Braised Pork Belly: My boyfriend had this, and seemed to like it just fine. The cheese polenta served with it was really good.
— Mignardises: Seems like dessert was an afterthought for the kitchen. The various cookies/​tarts/​truffles were average to bad. I have a huge sweet tooth and didn’t even finish dessert.
The meal was way too expensive for being so unsatisfying & I don’t plan on ever returning. If you are staying at the hotel and it’s too rainy to venture out, I would recommend sticking with basic food because I think it should be hard to mess up a burger or pizza.

Mm, pork and ricotta ravioli roasted, shallots, kale, pork jus pasta. This was tasty and kale is one of the best greens for ya. IMO, you’re paying for ambience, location and ingredients. Based off this dish, I would enjoy trying other selections. The bread was good, although that butter (?) slice seemed a bit too large for me. I also got more bread to finish up that tasty pork jus. Nice plating/​presentation, too (perhaps a bit much with a cast iron[?] plate on a cloth on a plate).
Service was tolerable. Everyone just seemed (for lack of better short way to say it) «MEH». The short cute asian girl who seated me and brought the bread seemed robotic. Even dropped the bread and butter off with a strange haste. My waitress, Danielle, seemed like she was somewhat possessed by boredom and I’ll just sum her up by saying that, when I was leaving, she spoke with a tone like that of a doorman to a ghost mansion: «Have_​_​a_​_​lovely_​_​day_​_​». Also, a totally separate dude clad in a full formal suit brought my pasta out.
Strange, but cool and good food.

I LOVE the bread here. It’s warm, it’s chewy, comes with butter — it’s everything that table bread should be.
That’s seriously my favorite thing and THE reason that I would choose to come back, because the food ranges from ‘okay for gourmetish stuff’, to damn good (heavy on the former). As does the service — I was impressed that the correct descriptor for both the hostess and our server was ‘classy’. But those aren’t reason enough to come back here, when there are so many places in Seattle I haven’t been. The bread is.
It’s interesting to see other reviewers commenting on how empty the place is. It was empty when we were there too — though, that’s not possibly a bad thing. The décor is lux and pleasant — though everything is huge: the wide table made things less intimate than it could have been, despite us being nearly the only ones there.
I was incredibly skeptical about the drink menu — back to my irritation with Absolut flavored vodkas and that whole shtick (there’s even apple pucker on the menu — really?) — but when coaxed into ordering one anyway, I thought the Emerald Drop was a lot of fun. Not Cicchetti, not Tavern Law, but fun. And big. And a pretty color. (Discerning minds may be softened by pretty colors.)
Another significant comment from another Unilocaler and rephrased here is that this is no place to go when Seattle is beautiful outside. It’s a tall, elegant, and pleasant cave, but it’s a cave — save it for the rainy, cold nastiness of winter.

What a let down. It’s a shame this restaurant is included in the Dine Around Seattle list. Usually I give some slack to restaurants serving the cheap seats with the $ 30 deal but I at least expect to enjoy one course.
Tonight, my friend and I dined at this odd place. It was dark inside despite the floor to ceiling windows on a sunny Seattle evening.
The seating was awkward by someone who I thought was subbing in for the host. He turned out to be our waiter. Perhaps it was his first night waiting tables but the service was so slow and hesitant it was hard to put up with.
I ordered the scallops which were served on the shell… all 3 of them. 3 tiny scallops. Sigh. The salmon cakes were really dry… I only stomached 2 of 3. Dessert was too rich… I had the espresso dessert that ended up being an extremely rich fudge type dessert. My friend’s dinner wasn’t much better — her ragu order was pretty grizzly.
There was one waiter, one host, one bus boy, and one cook. Hardly anyone was dining in the restaurant that night despite the $ 30 deal being run… now we know why.
All that being said happy hour in the hotel bar was great. The W Rose Drop was delicious and I kinda wish we’d eaten off their $ 5 menu instead.

It really is a shame that a hotel as cool as the W doesn’t even have a DECENT restaurant to eat in. Instead, they have a spendy and trendy joint where even if you don’t have a refined palate, you should be able to tell this food was cooked by people who just don’t care about the quality of the product they serve.
I’ll ALWAYS stay here, but my dining dollars will be spent elsewhere.

I came with a date for the 3 for $ 30 on a Thursday. after discovering that Barolo’s was booked. Earth and Ocean was our second choice. Barolo’s we will try again on another night.
The appetizer:
Smoked Duck Bresaola – Roasted Beet, Orange, Horseradish Crème Fraîche Vinaigrette
* delicious and fun.
The entrée:
Washington State American Lamb Leg, Cauliflower Gratin, Walnut Mint Gremolata
* The meat was a very large portion, tender and moist. Very good. The gremolata (which I’ve never had before) tasted salty to me and was not my favorite, but very interesting. I did like the dish but would not necessarily order it again.
The dessert:
Chocolate Cranberry Torte, Prune Gelato, Spiced Tuile
* Did not like the cranberry. Did not like the torte. The tuile (or cookie) was my favorite bit.
The service was exceptional. I thought the staff were genuinely very pleasant and sweet.
The décor was elegant. The feeling of the space was very expansive with high ceilings.
In response to other critiques, I’d like to mention that I did not notice the bar music nor the service elevator. Our food also arrived to us in a timely fashion and we were even offered a lovely sample from the kitchen in addition to our appetizer.

Honestly, I’m more impressed on the hotel ambiance more than the food itself.
My family came here for lunch and service is really good.
Started with soup then the raisin ravioli. It’s good, nothing spectacular.
But again, I really like the ambiance. I might come back here again.

My wife and I tried this place for an upscale night out. We’ve stayed at the W in town twice (staycations, more or less), and I really enjoy the W bar, which is upscale and makes great drinks.
The food really was excellent. For appetizers we ordered a plate of three cheeses and another plate with one kind of sausage on it. These were served with thin crackers, apricot and sauteed onion with the sausage, honeycomb, and two kinds of chocolate paired with the cheeses. The appetizers were good, but the portions were on the small side for the money. We’ve had as-​good cheeses at better values elsewhere.
For a main course, I ordered a roast lamb shank, which fell apart on the fork. It was delicious, the presentation was beautiful, and the accompaniments were perfect. My wife ordered the Ahi, which was also cooked perfectly, and she raved over.
Dessert was a raspberry tart, and two coffees. Excellent coffee, freshly brewed and flavorful. The raspberries were fresh, although the tart itself was somewhat underwhelming and bland. It had a hint of sweetness, which is fine as I don’t like too-​sweet desserts, but it seemed very pre-​prepared, without any kind of flourish.
Our server was exceedingly polite, and very knowledgeable. He was certainly an excellent waiter.
The restaurant décor was nicely done, but perhaps because this is a hotel restaurant, or perhaps because of the recession, we were left to stare at the room details for a long time, because the restaurant was almost empty. There were three occupied tables, including ours.
Overall, I’d say it was very good food, but the atmosphere was nonexistent, and everything was just slightly too expensive for what was delivered. If the portions were a little larger, or the prices a little lower, I’d give E&O another star.

The place smells of aromatic burger as we arrived for lunch. So some of us ordered burger with what the menu described as sexy burger. The place offers only bar menu for lunch on Saturday. We did get to sit in the swanky restaurant area. Although the place was empty, it took a while for the wait staff to sit us down, this does not sits well with our unfortunate New York anxiousness.
The food arrived well coordinated, a group of 8 of us get our meals at the same time. Drinks were on the table much earlier. The service was good. The burger looks good. Each order comes with 3 individual sealed bottles of ketchup, mayo and mustard. Impressive. One bites into the burger and the stringy sexy fries and I know the waiter had the bragging right about their burger. It was great. I must say I will come back some other time when in Seattle.

I am so torn on Earth and Ocean. I went to the restaurant on a Thursday night with a group of girlfriends during the «Dine Around» promotion. The best way I can explain it is to categorize the experiences within E&O.
Good:
–Food was delicious, everything that I ate I was oohing and ahhing at.
–Décor is trendy, dark rich tones, and beautifully lit.
–The server was very educated in the menu and the ingredients in each plate.
–They accommodated exceptionally well for my food allergies.
Bad:
–The empty restaurant and need to still sit us next to the service door — we were constantly bombarded with wait staff walking into our conversations.
Ugly:
–The award «club like» music blasting out of the bar. Our entire table felt like we were missing out on all the fun, or like we were at a Vegas buffet.
–The one hour wait for our appetizer!!! With no people in the restaurant, this really did shock us.
So there you have it, the good, the bad, and the extremely ugly side of earth and ocean. I don’t think I’ll be going back, it is a real shame that the food didn’t match the atmosphere.

Two stars feels a little harsh but the reality is that there are too many good restaurants in Seattle to bother coming back here. The truffle fries are great. Everything else was OK. The squash soup with carmelzied onion and pear sounded way better on paper but was thin and not too tasteful. The bass had the opposite problem: it was so salty that Chef Tom Colicchio for once would meet a dish he didn’t feel needed more seasoning. I still taste the salt a day letter.
The service was phenomenal, maybe only because it was a slow night. But the kitchen sent us an amuse bouche, a mound of free truffle tries, and a small espresso shot of soup for my dinner companion since I was having an appetizer and he wasn’t. The waitress was so friendly that we spent much of the dinner arguing over who she was flirting with more (correct answer: me).
But in the end, it’s a W Hotel dinner in a place with no surprises. Nothing wrong with that but Seattle has too many good spots to keep this on the list.

As another reviewer said… the menu tricks you into thinking you’re getting something grand, and you’re just … not!
Service started out alright, but as soon as we ordered… it ended up going downhill quickly — as we barely saw the waiter again. And no, the restaurant was not packed at ALL!
We ordered the charcuterie plate because the waiter wouldn’t stop praising the chef and how it was his specialty. Well… let’s just say the chef should find another specialty.
It started to snow while we were waiting for our entrees — since it was dead I decided to run outside to frolick in the once a year snow I’d see. No one noticed we were gone, it was kind of a joke.
While the scallops were good, there were three of them, and that was not enough for a meal. Steak was alright, but certainly not worth the price tag.
Has a very extensive wine list, starting at about $ 45. The $ 45 pinot noir was tasty, I’d re-​order it in a heartbeat.
I wasn’t happy with our experience, so we skipped dessert.
The end!

Earth & Ocean and the W’s hotel/​room service kitchen are one and the same. That should give you an idea of what to expect from this place.
The ambience, menu descriptions and presentation will try to trick you into thinking you’re getting something fancy and exotic, but what you end up with is boring, unflavorful food. DEFINITELY stay away from the «peach semifreddo,» which is the unfortunate love child of Cool Whip and Styrofoam.
I would only eat here if you live for mediocre room service food, and are willing to pay for it.

Microsoft prime 2007
Ambience: 3
Food: 3
Value: 1
They sat us at the most unromantic table next to the kitchen. Even had it been in another part of the restaurant, I doubt it would have mattered much. The general setting is just not very special, very generic and crammed in. It’s nice, but not special
The food was good. But it’s the same stuff you can get at every decent Seattle dinning place. Not unique, had the duck, scallops, steak, and lamb. (We ordered the most expensive things on the menu, and expected it to be spectacular, but it wasn’t) For the price we paid, I wanted better.

I had the opportunity to go to Earth & Ocean for a coworker’s birthday last month. This meant I was able to take part in the Dine Around Seattle promotion, which let me choose a 3-​course lunch for $ 15. I was pretty excited about this.
Unfrotunately, the food was okay, but not great. My octopus salad was a refreshing and tasty way to start off the meal. But the eggplant pasta dish I had as my main course was rather… overpowering. The use of balsamic vinegar in this dish made it really too strong. The mushrooms were good and the noodles were nice, but the overall flavor of the dish just didn’t do it for me. I was left wanting more… or in reality, literally wanting to order additional food to make me happier. Instead I picked extra french fries off of my coworker’s plate. For dessert, I had a lemon panna cotta and it was actually quite tasty, if a little bit too sweet. I enjoyed it though… it was probably my favorite part of the meal.
Service was decent, but a little lacking. It took me a long time to wave someone down to get a spoon (I needed one to eat my pasta dish!) and by the time I had finally gotten someone, I had already cut some of my noodles up… so it was difficult to eat. Water glasses were always kept full, so that was a plus.
Overall, my experience at Earth & Ocean was just okay. Nothing terrible by any means, but nothing special either. I probably wouldn’t return here unless it was the Dine Around Seattle promotion again, because it’s just too expensive for me.

A bunch of us went here last month to celeberate a friend’s birthday. We sat at the lounge with the trendy and sleek but comfy furniture that adds to the hip atmosphere one would expect from a W hotel lobby. The bar was packed with beautiful people in beautiful clothes, both tourists and locals. The lounge was less crowded, but was more suited for us since we had a 2 year old with us as well.
W bar serves great cocktails, our favorite from the last visit is the Pomojito, a mojito made with Pomegranate juice, but they ran out of Pomegranate juice this time (!!), instead they were serving a black berry mojito, which we named blackbohito. I went for the Sucker Punch which a cocktail of Orange Vodka, Mango Rum, Pineapple and Passion Fruit juices and champagne. My second drink was the Blackbohito which was amazingly as good as the Pomojito. Some of the other drinks which were passed around the table included dirty martini and cosmopolitan, none of us had a bad drink there.
Food at the Earth & Ocean restaurant is to die for. They serve regional Northwest cuisine, and it is not the typical chain restaurant that serves regular steak and seafood fare that comes to mind when you think of a hotel restaurant. The dishes are a modern take on classic American cuisine, and are prepared from the freshest local ingredients. And more importantly, for fellow Microsoftees, the entrees are buy 1 get 1 free, an amazing deal for food like this.
We didn’t order any food from the restaurant this time, stuck with the bar fare, since we had dinner reservations at the 1200 Bistro. The lamb skewers with crme frache dip was my favorite, the lamb was succulent and was cooked to the right degree, not too rare, not too well. I didn’t really care for the mini Kobe beef burgers, it was missing some flavors, and a little too dry for my taste, but our table did like it, since we ended up ordering more of it. The mini muffaletta, which is a sandwich made out of a special Sicilian bread, with three types of cured meat, I thought was better than the Kobe burgers, but then again, once you’ve had the Cascadia mini burgers, it is kind of tough to like others. I am sure we ordered more items, but most things are a little blur.
Another thing to note about the W lounge is they are very kid friendly… They have a kid’s menu and have crayons and papers for kids to draw on. Where else can you expect a hip place like this that let kids in! I guess that is the advantage of being a hotel bar, they have to cater to families.
We had a great time here, and I highly recommend it for a night out with friends, if you are just grabbing some drinks before a movie, or if you want to make it a full meal at the restaurant, you can’t go wrong at Earth & Ocean.