Boathouse Reopens Saturday, Feb. 17!

We’re thrilled to reopen our first-floor Boathouse on Saturday, February 17 at 5pm!

Book a post-Valentine’s date or a night out at Seattle’s best seafood restaurant and join us back here for your favorite Ray’s dishes like Wild PNW King Salmon, Applewood Grilled Sake Kasu, Dungeness Crab Cakes, salads, steak, pasta, dessert and so much more!

Don’t forget a bottle from our award-winning wine list.

Reserve in the Boathouse today. See you soon!

New! Ray’s Family Meals To-go

Try our new Ray’s Family Meals to-go with four delicious family-style menus! Each ones comes fully cooked and is hot and ready to eat at pickup. Family Meals are available to order online daily from 11:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. only on Ray’s Toast page.

Order a meal for one to two people or build a bigger family meal by adding two or three of the same meal or mixing and matching. We’ve also included recommended wine and cocktail pairings for each meal that can be added on for an additional cost. Cheers!

Ray’s Family Meal Menu:

True Cod Fish & Chips Meal (serves 1-2) $30
Cup of Ray’s New England Style Clam Chowder
2 piece True Cod fish and Chips
Cookie Bag (house baked cookies that change daily)

Pairing suggestions:
Torre Oria Brut Cava Sparkling Wine (bottle)
Underground Wine Projects ‘Mr Pink’ Washington Rosé 2019(bottle)
Black Cherry Margarita (serves 2)

Ray’s Famous Sablefish Dinner (serves 1-2) $62
Caesar Salad
1 large Crab Cake with orange-tarragon aïoli
Sablefish in Sake Kasu

Pairing suggestions:
Willakenzie Estate Pinot Noir ‘Pierre Leon’ Willamette Valley, OR 2014 (bottle)
Sokol Blosser Estate Pinot Gris Willamette Valley, OR 2018 (bottle)
Barrel-Aged Brooklyn Cocktail (serves 2)

An Evening of Seafood (serves 2) $80
Bowl of Ray’s New England Style Clam Chowder
Ray’s Seafood Salad featuring Oregon bay shrimp, house smoked Alaskan Coho salmon and house smoked scallops
Pan Seared Sea Scallops with squid ink spaghetti OR Alaskan King Salmon with sweet corn purée and sautéed asparagus
Mississippi Mud Pie

Pairing suggestions:
Treveri Blanc de Blancs Sparkling Wine from Washington (bottle)
Seven Hills Sauvignon Blanc Walla Walla, WA 2019 (bottle)
Ray’s Barrel-Aged Negroni Cocktail (serves 2)

Ray’s ShellFeast (serves 2-3) $105
Bowl of Ray’s New England Style Clam Chowder
Prawn Cocktail
Mediterranean Mussels with Thai style red curry, coconut milk broth
1lb King Crab with butter and lemon
Grilled Asparagus
Grilled Corn on the Cob
2 rolls with Butter

Pairing Suggestions:
Bollinger Champagne (bottle)
Treveri Blanc de Blancs Sparkling Wine from Washington (bottle)
Ray’s Private Select Woodford Reserve Perfect Manhattan (serves 2)

Salish Sea Chef’s Dinner at Ray’s November 14!

Sustainable Seafood Celebration is joining forces with five incredible Northwest chefs with a passion for seafood, for an evening focused on sustainable seafood practices and successes in the Salish Sea. Guests will learn about the many success stories of local seafood from excellent runs of Baker River Sockeye in 2019 to expanding tribal fishing practices and more. They will meet the people who are driving this forward and making changes from fishermen and women to chefs and activists.

Five featured chefs will create a multi-course dinner with each preparing one course that highlights local seafood including: Salish Sea Dungeness Crab, Baker River Sockeye Salmon, Salish Sea Halibut, reef net Salish Sea Pink Salmon, and fresh oysters.

Featured Chefs
Paul Duncan, Ray’s Boathouse
Renee Erickson, The Whale Wins
Kevin Davis, Blueacre Seafood
Wayne Johnson, FareStart
Adam Stevenson, Copperleaf at Cedarbrook Lodge

Salmon Safe Wines
Brickhouse Vineyards Chardonnay Ribbon Ridge, OR 2016
L’Ecole No. 41 ‘Perigee’ Estate Red Seven Hills Vineyard, Walla Walla Valley, WA 2015
Sokol Blosser Estate Rosé of Pinot Noir Dundee Hills, OR 2018

“We’re extremely excited to share the many successes coming out of the Salish Sea with folks. We are facing perilous times in our environment and it’s important for people to see and understand that visible progress is being made and that our salmon and halibut runs can get stronger”, said Riley Starks, Salish Sea fisherman, founder of Salish Center for Sustainable Fishing Methods, co-founder of Sustainable Seafood Celebration.

The dinner event is Thursday, November 14 at 6 p.m. at Ray’s Boathouse in Ballard (in the Northwest Room) where the Salish Sea has been their backyard for 46 years. The evening will be co-hosted by Sustainable Seafood Celebration co-founders Riley Starks and Larry Mellum, owner of Pike Place Chowder.

Each chef will dine at a table with guests for more intimate conversation about protecting and nurturing the bounty of the Salish Sea and why sustainable fishing practices is important to them.

Tickets
Tickets are $125 per person and inclusive of multi-course dinner, salmon safe wine and gratuity. Reservations are required to attend and tickets must be purchased online by Friday, November 1, 2019. All guests must be 21 years of age and older to attend. Ticket proceeds benefit Sustainable Seafood Celebration and its partners in the fight to restore sustainable fishing practices, wild salmon runs and local waterways. Tickets available for purchase here.

About Sustainable Seafood Celebration
Sustainable Seafood Celebration is a nonprofit group launched in 2018. Its mission is to raise awareness of the fruits of the Salish Sea – encouraging efforts to keep our local waters healthy despite rapid population growth; rebuilding healthy populations of wild salmon from the Salish Sea; supporting the survival of the Orcas; and highlighting the successful results of good policy and responsible management. More at sustainableseafoodcelebration.org.

About the Salish Sea
The Salish Sea is one of the world’s largest and biologically rich inland seas. Its name pays tribute to the first inhabitants of the region, the Coast Salish. The Salish Sea is an inland sea that encompasses Puget Sound, the San Juan Islands and the waters off of Vancouver, B.C. The area spans from Olympia, Washington in the south to the Campbell River, British Columbia in the north, and west to Neah Bay and includes the large cities of Seattle and Vancouver.

About Riley Starks
A Washington native, Riley Starks took the less traveled fork in the road for the first time when he eschewed law school and bought his first fishing boat in 1973. He has been a commercial fisherman all of his life, and along the way explored other uncharted territory on Lummi Island by building Nettles Farm in 1992, buying and operating the Willows Inn in 2001, founding Lummi Island Wild, a reefnet salmon business, and finally owning and operating Nettles Farm B&B in 2013.

About Larry Mellum
Larry Mellum is the founder and owner of Pike Place Chowder in Seattle’s historic Pike Place Market. In the 1990s he and a partner opened the Charlestown Street Cafe in West Seattle where they held a weekly chowder contest that drew fans from all over the state and lead to first-place wins in several national chowder cook-offs. In 2003 Larry opened Pike Place Chowder where eight varieties of chowder are served daily. Four years later a second eatery was opened in the Pacific Place Shopping Center. In 2018 Pike Place Chowder’s New England Clam Chowder was acclaimed by Yelp, “The Most Popular Dish in America”.

A Lesson in Salish Sea Salmon Restoration

Sustainability and the health of our Salish Sea and waterways has long been an area of focus for the ownership and staff at Ray’s Boathouse. We’ve always worked to educate our team about what they are serving, where it came from and how it was caught or harvested. We visit our fishermen and women and other purveyors to see where our product comes from and how they run their businesses.

In the last year we partnered with non-profit Long Live the Kings (LLTK) to take an even larger role in the welfare of our local salmon runs so that generations to come can enjoy fresh wild salmon as we have. We are shifting our focus from one of sustainability to one that ensures our salmon populations increase as our city and infrastructure continues to grow and change.

Everything LLTK does is on behalf of improving the health and habitats of local salmon including three main areas: advancing science, improving management and implementing solutions.

Recently our team had the opportunity to sit down with the Executive Director of LLTK, Jacques White, for a lesson in salmon sustainability and the current state of our local runs, as well as updates regarding the Southern Resident Killer Whale Recovery Task Force which is helping to ensure they have enough wild salmon to survive.

In the early 1980s there were nearly 1,000,000 Chinook salmon harvested here compared to about 200,000 in 2010. The biggest factors affecting Salish Sea salmon populations are:

  • Food sources (zooplankton and other salmon friendly nutrients)
  • Pollution
  • Noise
  • Predators
  • Infrastructure

Each of these plays a role in the reduction of salmon for various reasons and when compounded it’s easy to see why our local salmon are suffering.

There is no quick solution to this issue, but they have seen positive results in recent years including the ongoing restoration of Hood Canal summer chum. These fish were nearly extinct by the early 1990s but with the help of LLTK operating a conservation hatchery program to increase the abundance of naturally spawning summer chum, the number of adults returning to these rivers annually has increased from the 100s to well over 2,000.

LLTK is also actively involved in the Southern Resident Killer Whale Recovery Task Force developed recently to address population concerns for these whales. The task force made recommendations to Governor Inslee to protect orcas and aid in their recovery with 11 of the 36 recommendations influenced by LLTK’s Salish Sea Marine Survival Project!

Ray’s is dedicated to this cause and doing what we can to increase the populations of our local salmon. For us it starts at the team level getting everyone at Ray’s to understand the issues at hand and to be able to educate our guests.

We invite you to learn more and get involved in this journey with us at LLTK.org.

Images courtesy of Long Live the Kings. 

Fresh Copper River Salmon Has Arrived!

Copper River salmon season has begun and Ray’s has just received this incredible, fresh fish directly from Alaska!

We source our Copper River salmon from hard-working fishermen and women who take great care in fishing sustainably and providing the best fish available. These gorgeous fish build muscle and fat just to be able to run up the mighty Copper River– and the result is a rich, fatty fish with incredible flavor and texture.

It’s also the time of year for our favorite pairing: Copper River salmon and Oregon Pinot Noir! We have some excellent Pinot Noir selections available by the glass or bottle in the Boathouse including:

  • Brittan Vineyards 2015 Pinot Noir, McMinnville, OR 
      • Brittan’s ‘Basalt Block’ bottling shows a fullness and depth of richness that still manages to retain the laser focus on the basalt driven minerality of the estate terroir. Raspberries galore, with pinpoint definition.
  • Smockshop Band 2018 Pinot Noir, Columbia Gorge, OR
      • Master Sommelier, Nate Ready’s focus for Smockshop Band is a biodynamic farming exploration of the Columbia Gorge terroir. This ‘Spring Ephemeral’ bottling of Pinot Noir represents the fleeting transitory nature of spring and displays a silky, elegant balance of wild, tart red and dark berry fruit and rustic earth. Just stunning!
  • Sokol Blosser Estate Rosé 2018, Dundee Hills, OR – from Pinot Noir grapes!
      • Made from 100% estate grown pinot noir grapes, this stunning Rosé features fresh strawberry, pink grapefruit and blood orange with a hint of pepper spicing up the finish.

Make your reservations for the Café or Boathouse to enjoy fresh Copper River King and Sockeye salmon at Seattle’s best waterfront restaurant! And follow our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for new Copper River salmon specials over the next few weeks.

Ray’s & Long Live the Kings Work to Restore Wild Salmon

Dear guests,

Since our start in 1973 Rays has supported causes that benefit our local waterways, salmon and sustainable fishing. The water is our lifeblood, not just because we sit atop it but because we love to serve fresh fish at Ray’s and support our local fisherman, who depend on it.

The future of fish is the future of Ray’s. We’ve prided ourselves on doing the right thing from a sustainable fishing standpoint for 45 years and being a culinary leader in the community that helped usher in what is now called Pacific Northwest cuisine. We have a responsibility to protect this and we will not back down.

Earlier this month we announced our partnership with local non-profit Long Live the Kings (LLTK) and we would like to take this opportunity to expand on what that entails, how we’ll be working with them in the fight, and how you can get involved.

LLTK was founded in 1986 with the mission to restore wild salmon and steelhead and support sustainable fishing in the Pacific Northwest. They combine innovative field work, pioneering science, broad partnerships, and sophisticated new management tools to help decision-makers advance salmon recovery while balancing the needs of fish and people.

Our involvement with LLTK began with an internal education for our entire team where they were fortunate to receive a training session from Executive Director Jacques White about how LLTK is working to restore our local salmon runs. It’s something staff can share with our guests and also take pride in their knowledge of what it takes to keep wild salmon thriving in the Pacific Northwest.

We have staff field trips in the works and our goal is to get as many of our team as possible out there with LLTK to experience a hands-on working trip and understand their work even further.

We are currently running our Salmon Safe Wine promotion in the Café and Boathouse with $1 from each glass or bottle sold going to LLTK now until November 7. This is a first step to invite our guests to get familiar with LLTK and do something simple to help make a difference.

You can look forward to many more ways to support LLTK at Ray’s through the end of this year and into 2019! We also encourage you to visit lltk.org to sign up for their newsletter and get informed on the many exciting projects and events they have in the works.

Please join us in this important cause and contact us if you would like to get involved in a bigger way. rays@rays.com

Warmly,
Douglas Zellers, GM and Co-owner