2 downtown Seattle restaurants, Café Hitchcock and Oyster Cellar, close
Seattle chef and restaurateur Brendan McGill announced Monday on social media that he has shut down Café Hitchcock and the Oyster Cellar in the Exchange Building, pointing toward insufficient foot traffic downtown as the chief reason for the closures.
McGill said this week that he waited as long as possible for downtown workers to return to their cubicles before closing his two downtown businesses. He believes the days of packed happy hours and power lunches may not return in this business corridor if vacancy remains high in office towers.
Without a game or concert nearby, "you might have a $200 day, McGill told The Seattle Times on Tuesday. "I am paying my staff $30 an hour for eight hours to be there. Just opening the doors was too expensive, even without the cost of everything else."
He said remote work has pinched the bottom line for dining rooms that rely on tenants to buy coffee and breakfast sandwiches and expense account dinners.
McGill has opened five restaurant concepts in Seattle since 2014; he has three restaurants operating on Bainbridge Island, including his latest project, Kingfisher. In recent weeks, McGill quietly started to wind down both of his remaining Seattle restaurants.
The chef opened Café Hitchcock in 2017. Two years later, he leased the space next door to open his pizzeria, Bar Taglio, which later became a trattoria, Bar Solea. McGill pivoted from Bar Solea to an oyster bar in 2024; the latter required as few as two workers at any given time: one to shuck oysters and one to pour drinks.
Even with that bare-bones staffing, McGill said Tuesday that it's hard to make the math work to keep the lights on at a restaurant in downtown.
McGill wagers that downtown restaurants will survive only if employers and employees return to office buildings.
"That's what's missing," he said. The daily pulse of people coming in and out of the city to do commerce. Working from home has changed the landscape forever. If you're in the central business district, it is a death blow."
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This story was originally published June 3, 2026 at 6:37 AM.