At Sea’d In, the wood fire is burning again in Capitol Hill’s Chophouse Row

Two of the most important names in the Pike/Pine business community are behind the creation of Sea’d In, a new Capitol Hill restaurant that treats fish like fine steak.

Chef Heong Soon Park said the spark for the wood fire-powered concept came in a call from Chophouse Row developer Liz Dunn, who Park credits with keeping Capitol Hill’s character intact as the neighborhood changes and grows. She had a showcase restaurant space open and one question for him up front: Did he like cooking with fire?

Park had already been circling an idea for a seafood restaurant, something he had originally pictured closer to the water, but that concept never found the right home. When Dunn reached out, he brought the idea to her instead, and the two of them worked out the shape of it together. “She inspired me, and then I filled in the blanks,” he says.

While Dunn — Chophouse Row, the Piston & Ring Building, Melrose Market — is the shaper of many of the core commercial spaces of modern-day Capitol Hill, Park is responsible for a growing fleet of neighborhood restaurants.

Park’s first venture in Capitol Hill’s restaurant scene was Meet Korean BBQ which has been part of Capitol Hill since its inauspicious opening in the winter of 2020 only weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns hit.

In 2024, Park took on the reinvention of a space that had been home to a deeply rooted Capitol Hill food legend with the transformation that saw his Grana Padano and Parmesan-laden Cheese Room take over the longtime Melrose at Pine home of Machiavelli as its ownership decided to focus on its Edmonds location.

Park’s most recent Capitol Hill reboot came last year on E Pike where he opened  Gol Mok Korean Market Bar, a new start for the Taku space created by Seattle celebrity chef Shota Nakajima.

Other recent acquisitions include restarts in West Seattle including the Luna Park Cafe.

Park’s new beginnings aren’t shallow imitations. He has been part of the Seattle dining scene for 20 years and owns Chan in the Paramount Hotel downtown and the Bacco Café in Pike Place Market.

Sea’d In is also much more than a reboot. The restaurant’s identity is in dry-aged seafood and techniques Park traces back to South Korea where cooks didn’t have the cold storage geography of Europe and instead learned to age fish in the cold sea air.

Seafood comes in from auction and gets handled as little as possible before going into an aging room held between roughly 0 and 5 degrees Celsius, with humidity between 70 and 90%. Timing depends on the fish. White fish like snapper or branzino ages three to four days, salmon two to three weeks, and tuna, because of its higher fat content, as long as two months. It’s the same protein and enzyme breakdown that tenderizes dry aged beef, drawing out moisture and concentrating flavor.

From there, everything goes onto Sea’d In’s wood fired grill, the only cooking method in the space formerly home to the Light Sleeper wine bar and once home to long-gone Bar Ferdinand.

“We start with this basic fish, we layer it with the dry age, we layer it with the smoke, we layer with koji, we layer with the sauce,” Park says. That idea of stacking time and technique is where the restaurant’s “Time and Fire” comes from. Time is aging and fermenting. Then comes the fire.

Park says this project might be his favorite of anything he’s done, largely because of the Chophouse Row and its courtyard. There is live music on weekends, a monthly art night, and an annual local fashion show, plus neighbors like Xóm and Tailwind Cafe.

“This is exactly how Capitol Hill used to be. Nothing crazy, always chill, happy, relaxed,” he says. “Now I feel like I’m part of it.”

For a first visit, he recommends the crudo, all of it dry-aged, along with vegetables cooked over the wood fire and a whole fish that’s gone through the full aging and grilling process.

“Come in here or sit in the courtyard and enjoy the weather. You don’t have to be on your phone anymore,” Park says. “This is a good place to know neighbors. Meet actual people here.”

Sea’d In now open inside Chophouse Row at 1124 11th Ave. Learn more at seadinseattle.com.