Fine Dining Review: Sushi by Scratch Seattle

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Updated: 3/20/2024 | Fine Dining Review: Sushi by Scratch Seattle

Chefs and restauranteurs Phillip Frankland Lee and Margarita Kallas-Lee, the duo behind Los Angeles’ Scratch Restaurants group, have brought a Sushi By Scratch Restaurants outpost to Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood in 2022.

On August 1st, 2022, the restaurant began taking reservations for their September 1st dinner.

While their menu is mostly consistent across all the locations, they make an effort to source locally, so many of the ingredients used in their Seattle Omakase menu are local when possible.

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The ambiance is pretty similar across all Sushi by Scratch locations. You enter through a speakeasy-type entrance into a small dining room where you’re offered a free cocktail pairing with two small bites to begin your journey.

Thereafter, a 17-course land and sea omakase (mostly of nigiri) is presented to you by three chef’s.

A bartender helps you decide which pairing you’d like. We highly recommend the beverage pairing which includes 3 sakes, 2 cocktails, and a beer. Beverages are also available a la carte.

Beverage Pairings

The sushi roundup is mostly inventive with very few traditional takes. That was Lee’s intention, to create a menu that told his culinary story growing up as a white man in the San Gabriel Valley.

As the name implies, everything is made from scratch. There are no sauces for you to dip your nigiri in, as each piece is meticulously assembled and served as intended.

The only thing that would serve as an accouterment was the crunchy pickled cucumbers to cleanse your palette in between bites.

Towards the end of your journey, you’re given an option for add-on sushi pieces and we chose the decadent fois gras.

What started as Lee’s first sushi bar, his literal old office space, has now turned into a storytelling platform for Lee to share his culinary journey with the world through food.

While Lee received a Michelin star for this LA location, it’s important to note that the Michelin guide only reviews restaurants in a few regions of the U.S., and the Northwest isn’t included.

Sushi by Scratch Omakase Menu

Our favorite dishes from the evening included:

Chef Lee’s famous hamachi nigiri brushed with sweet corn pudding and then dusted with sourdough crumbs.
Vancouver spot prawn nigiri that is brushed with a blend of matcha, mushrooms, kelp, and finished with house-made soy sauce, lemon Balinese sea salt, and wasabi. It’s then torched to perfection.
The buttery Miyazaki Wagyu.
Chef Lee’s signature rendered bone marrow fat nigiri tastes like butter melting in your mouth.
And finally, unagi that’s fried using the leftover bone marrow fat from the previous course.

Watch our Instagram video to see everything we ate.