Volterra

A restaurant and more

Some of the best deals at the restaurant are on the wine list. "Fifty percent of the list is at $60 or under," explains Don. "We don’t mark wine up that much. We get wine that goes well with our food—Brunello, Barolo, Cabernet. There are so many wines out there and we have a list of 120. If we can’t get 120 great wines, we’re doing something wrong. People count on us for good food and wine that pairs well. In Italy, restaurants have their own house wine, buying barrels from a vineyard and filling bottles from that. We work with Patterson Cellars, tasting from the barrel and deciding on the blend to create our Volterra Chardonnay, Red and Syrah. We’ve always looked for wine that goes well with food. This year we’re looking at blends that stand on their own as well. We’ve also had wine made in Italy for us, but we’ve run through four pallets already and are working on what we want to bring in next. We like creating something that’s our own; it’s one more thing that makes us unique."

Photo above: Volterra dining room

"Michelle and I are a good team," says Don. "She has common sense, an eye for design and is a great sounding board. I’m the emotional one." Michelle designed the restaurant, including the alabaster chandeliers, handles public relations, marketing and catering sales. The pictures in the dining room were taken in Italy, all by Don except the ones of their wedding. The stained glass windows high on one wall came about because Dale Chihuly felt they "needed some color up there." A friend of Dale’s, stained glass artist Dick Weiss, created the windows.

In addition to the restaurant, they have more irons in the fire. They handle catering for the Chihuly Boat House events. They have their own catering site, The Drawing Room, next door to the restaurant, which opened in August of 2007. Dale Chihuly helped design the room. They sell Don’s fennel salt on line. That took off after it was discovered at San Francisco’s Fancy Food Show in 2006. They were invited to put it into the gift bags at the Oscars and have been invited back ever since, and work with many celebrity events. The salt is also sold in Dean & DeLuca and Whole Foods stores. "I developed the salt before we ever had the restaurant," says Don. "We serve it on the tables with our Tuscan extra virgin olive oil to accompany our traditional Tuscan unsalted bread."

Photo: The Drawing Room

They took another celebrity jump when Rachel Ray discovered them. She featured them on air on both her CBS talk show and on "Rachel’s Vacations" on the Food Network. She also featured their fennel salt and porcini salt (and still buys it frequently) and suggested in her magazine that people use it for stocking stuffers. Eventually she named them her "Favorite Restaurant on the Planet." "People have definitely come to the restaurant because of her," says Michelle.

Despite the success they’ve had, they’ve taken things slowly. When they first opened the patio, they simply moved some of the dining room chairs and tables outdoors. They wanted to ensure they could handle the flow before they added seats. The second summer, they purchased furniture, adding to the overall space. "We get very few complaints," says Don. "The biggest complaint we got for years was that people couldn’t get reservations. The bar and patio are always first come, first served. And it is easier to get reservations now."

As they look back over the past five years, they are surprised by some things and happy that other things went as planned. "No one could predict that we’d get such a celebrity following. We wanted Volterra to be a place people would make their own and that has happened," says Don. "Some customers come in almost every day and some come in for both brunch and dinner on the weekends. We have also built relationships with a lot of people because of the restaurant. We have people who have visited the city of Volterra and learned about the restaurant from our friends there and come back to try us."

Volterra 5411 Ballard Ave NW Seattle, WA 98107 206-789-5100 The Drawing Room 5407 Ballard Ave NW Seattle, WA 98107 www.volterrarestaurant.com

Clearly, it’s been more than "a job" for Don and it only took one year of Michelle doing both jobs for them to realize she was needed full-time at the restaurant. "The amount of business we’ve had has surprised us. We have a 60 seat restaurant, yet we can do 400 covers between brunch and dinner on a Saturday in the summer when the patio is open," says Michelle. "We decided to open a catering space because we had more large groups than we could accommodate. Having The Drawing Room enables us to put together exciting events, like our work with the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF). Each quarter we host "Dinner and a Movie" to benefit SIFF. This year, our series features the work of a local filmmaker and we collaborate with them to create a menu for the evening. To date, we have raised nearly $40,000 for SIFF through the series."

Don and Michelle have given thought to the future, but have no specific plans. Maybe another Volterra, maybe a similar concept but different name. Until the economic climate changes, they won’t be making any solid plans. What they are committed to is doing what they do better each day. "Consistency is the key," says Don. "We’re staying true to our philosophy and working to make the Volterra experience better for our guests all the time." We can live with that.

Click here to read Part 1 of the Volterra story

Connie Adams/August/September 2010

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