Ridpath restaurants getting new look
The restaurant management group responsible for the downtown Spokane sushi lounge Bluefish recently stepped up to fill a pair of landmark gaps in the local nightlife scene.
Spokane-based Cuisine Northwest was selected by the Artisan Hotel group, the Las Vegas-based hotel chain which purchased the Ridpath Hotel in 2006, to renovate and re-imagine the former homes of the street-level Silver Grill and Ankeny’s rooftop restaurant in the Ridpath complex.
“We’re trying to bring a fresh image to the whole place,” said Cuisine Northwest partner Eric Nagano. “In recent memory, Ankeny’s and the Silver Grill and the whole Ridpath thing kind of went downhill.
“We’re excited about being a part of the whole rebirth of the restaurant scene in Spokane.”
Nagano and his Cuisine Northwest crew — minus co-founder Ian Wingate, who recently bowed out to focus on his restaurant, Moxie — started on the ground floor, taking cues from the Vegas hotel chain to open the Artisan Room on March 15.
“The Artisan Hotel group takes a boutique approach,” Nagano said, referring to the complete overhaul of the Silver Grill location, which includes gray slate walls, golden-leaf ceilings, black leather furniture and impressionistic and 20th century art on the walls.
The Artisan Room serves breakfast and lunch, with future plans for dinner and cocktails.
All eyes are fixed on the former home of Ankeny’s on the 13th floor, however, and the fate of Spokane’s revered rooftop locale with its 360-degree skyline view.
Called Soleil, the new top-floor tenant will open in May to serve high-end “Northwest regional cuisine with French flair,” from a menu created by Cuisine Northwest’s corporate culinary director Gonzalo Carrillo.
It will feature tableside service, Nagano said, which may include meat carving, pouring soups and whipping up Caesar salads alongside tables.
“We’re going to try to get very interactive with our guests,” he said.
Though the space is in the midst of a complete renovation, Soleil will maintain the upscale restaurant-and-lounge atmosphere of Ankeny’s, which originally opened in the Ridpath in April 1981.
The lounge will kick off its evenings as a jazz and piano bar with a happy hour, but as night wears on, Nagano said he plans to enlist the help of a friend, fellow Hawaiian-born restaurateur Noel Macapagal, owner of RAW Sushi and Island Grill, to breathe some life into the place.
“He’s kind of partnered up with us to do some marketing and to create kind of a club atmosphere,” including dancing and VIP rooms, Nagano said. “We want to give it a big-city feel. But it’s not going to be a discotheque or anything like that.”