La Marea combines Pacific Northwest seafood with Mexican marisqueria culture.
Magnificent seafood is as much our city’s brand as innovation, public radio, and our weird pride about not using umbrellas. But, until recently, we lacked many excellent dedicated seafood bars—though there were oyster bars and sushi destinations aplenty.
We could go out for Italian food and assume there would be brothy shellfish; neighborhood restaurants loaded up on salmon come spring, and chefs all knew their lingcod from their black cod (and that neither is actually a cod). Any restaurant hewing local in any way had seafood options…