Rover's

Hours:
Lunch: Fri 12-1:30pm
Dinner: Tue-Thu open at 5:30, Fri & Sat at 6pm

Cost:
Prices for set menus of 4-8 courses range from $45 to $130.
An á la carte menu is also available. 

Rover’s is a Seattle institution, no doubt about it. Located in Madison Park, the popular eatery has been serving seasonally inspired food since before the word “locavore” rolled off locals’ lips. Chef Thierry Rautureau bought the restaurant in 1987 and since then Rover’s has established a reputation as the place to go for a special romantic dinner, business deal or birthday celebration. How does Rover’s, having been around for so long, still manage to draw in consistent crowds for those momentous occasions?

It has to be in part by the magic in the air created by the captivating personality of Chef Rautureau as he wanders the dining room entertaining guests. After entering the restaurant through a garden courtyard and lavish waiting room, diners sit in a room that looks in dire need of an update. Yellow and maroon dominate the walls and curtains, making for a strange ambience. But color schemes be damned, as the attentive servers keeps patrons happy and focused on what’s important. Whether they are offering you a myriad of water choices or explaining the details of the Chef’s scrambled eggs with lime crème fraîche and white sturgeon caviar, interaction with the staff at Rover’s is both impressively personal and personable. Topped off with the charismatic Chef in the Hat, as Rautureau is known, wandering the floor and checking in with guests, there is little time to contemplate the décor.

The menu, riddled with expensive choices paired next to exotic ingredients, can be intimidating. Luckily, there are three or more ways to waive your burden of choice and put your complete trust in the Chef to bring you his best. Of the tasting menus, diners choose between a five or eight course meal. A vegetarian option is also available. Starting out the meal, a trio of amuse bouches give tantalizing bites of the house-cured fennel and cumin sausage, rabbit confit and fava bean purée to come during the meal.

The ‘opening courses’ build excitement as they arrive. New ingredients like herring roe still attached to the spruce tree upon which it spawned are served alongside more conventional ingredients such as scallop and sea urchin sashimi topped with soy sake vinaigrette. A brief intermission is highlighted with a grapefruit-champagne sorbet, elegantly sour and eminently palate cleansing. The “closing courses” pique the patrons’ interest with heartier meats and slightly larger portions including the innovative halibut with fennel flan. Foie gras, ever the flashy ingredient and crowd pleaser, is served up with such pride on a daily basis that I overheard the chef telling a fellow diner, “We run out of butter before we run out of foie gras!”

As with the fancy ingredients, much of what Rover’s does is help to make fancy eating easy for the diner. With a sommelier always on-site, there is no need to feign knowledge of wine. Well educated in all things oenological, he will introduce each bottle with flair and expertly accented French. The readily available and unassuming advice turns an otherwise intimidating thirty-plus page list navigable.
Rover’s offers the kind of pampered meal that is rare in Seattle. The kind where you come back from the restroom to find your napkin refolded and are always referred to by your last name. Whereas chefs like Tom Douglas and Ethan Stowell take a casual approach to fine dining, Rover’s serves haute cuisine in the manner the French intended: formally and ready for celebration.