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| Restaurant developers Nathan Opper and Zac Melang |
The most successful restaurant developers in Seattle may well be a duo named Nathan Opper and Zak Melang. Opper was a home builder in Michigan before landing in Seattle; Melang, a bass player, moved here from North Carolina to play music.
Eight years ago, eager to launch a restaurant venture together, they found a grand old building--an abandoned lumber mill on the fringe of Historic Ballard overlooking Shilshole Avenue--but the buildout, back then, seemed daunting. Instead they leased a little bar at the intersection of Market Street and Ballard Avenue called Matador. There are now four Matadors in Seattle, two in Portland and one more in Boise. And, as of this week, a new "Whiskey Kitchen" called Kickin Boot.
READ MORE: Melang fabricates the tables himself.
Having learned how to work with classic spaces (Melang does the design and fabricates all the tables himself) and how to run restaurants, they returned to their first love, the 1927 Henry Whyte lumber mill. This time they knew what to do: preserve the cedar beams by building an entire new roof, for example.
"It's not that Ballard is lacking for top-level dining, what with Bastille, Walrus & Carpenter, Staple & Fancy," Melang tells Curbed. "We want to add to that." The drawback for Ballard Avenue's restaurant row has been a lack of street parking. Melang will solve that problem by offering valet parking, a first for the neighborhood.
And the duo aren't done, not by a long shot. A second Kickin Boot Whiskey Kitchen is planned for Portland, to be followed by a third concept, under wraps for now, involving seafood.
All previous Preservation Projects on Curbed
All previous Ballard coverage on Curbed
