Seatown

Seatown sits at the north end of Pike Place Market, a few steps from the brass pig, with a patio that looks across Western Avenue toward Elliott Bay. It is the most relaxed room in Tom Douglas's Seattle group, and it is built on a simple idea: take the just-folks food of the Pacific Northwest waterfront — chowder, fish and chips, oysters, a salmon burger — and cook it to the standard Douglas applies at his white-tablecloth rooms.

Douglas is the most decorated restaurateur in the city. He won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurateur in 2012, took Best Northwest Chef in 1994, and a cookbook award in 2001 for Tom Douglas' Seattle Kitchen. Seatown is where that pedigree is applied without ceremony — paper, not linen; a counter, not a maître d'.

The kitchen runs on what comes off the boats. Copper River sockeye in season, Dungeness crab, oysters shucked to order from Washington and British Columbia beds. The wild salmon burger is the dish people come back for — a thick patty of ground salmon, griddled, on a soft bun. The Seatown clam linguine and the beer-battered Alaskan cod fish fry (three pieces, hand-cut fries, $25) are the other anchors. Breakfast, served until mid-afternoon, hides a Dungeness crab Benedict worth the detour.

Pricing is honest counter pricing: a cup of clam chowder is $9, a bowl $13, a sourdough bread bowl $19; a half-dozen oysters is $23, a dozen $45. Most people leave having spent $25 to $40 a head before drinks. The group's executive chef, Eric Tanaka — the man who accepted Douglas's James Beard medal on his behalf in 2012 — sets the standard the line cooks hold to.

The room is loud, bright and fast — bar stools, communal-feeling tables, an open patio when the weather allows. Lighting is daylight by day and warm bulbs after dark; tables are close; the soundtrack is the market and the gulls. There is no dress code and no reason for one. Order at the counter or grab a stool, take a number, and find a seat with a view of the ferries.