(Image: Cornelly)
Comforting pizza and pasta flavors are coming to the Hill this fall as new restaurant Cornelly finishes a buildout of its Summit and Mercer space and prepares for a takeout-centered opening.
Flanked by coronavirus-related delays, first-time restaurant owners Brett Phillips and Sam Carroll have spent the past five months perfecting the recipes and aesthetics of their new eatery that will join a surprisingly robust block of Capitol Hill food and drink home to Top Pot Doughnuts, the Summit Pub, Single Shot, and Sol Liquor Lounge.
“We wanted to do a neighborhood pizza and pasta place where we focus on doing naturally leavened pizza dough, handmade pastas, extruded pastas, and then really hyper seasonal vegetable plates,” Phillips said.
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With years of experience working as a chef at Ethan Stowell’s Tavolàta and How To Cook A Wolf concepts, Phillips honed his pasta-making craft before going in on this new space alongside Carroll, a fellow food industry vet.
“Since 2009 I’ve been drawing my dream restaurant on napkins and on the back of my menus at my other restaurants,” Phillips said.
The 601 Summit Ave E spot belonged to longtime pizza joint Toscana for twenty years and came with lots of older equipment like a conveyor belt oven, but Phillips said they scratched all that in favor of a buildout to invest in the space long term. The remodel means knocking down all interior walls to open up the space and make it a less dark, more inviting potential date spot.
“Our end concept is going to be like white ship lab going up the walls vertically and it’s going to be a really cool nice blue floor,” he said. “Kind of almost like a farmhouse vibe to it.”
Cornelly is being designed primarily for dine-in table service and bar seating, but Phillips says their expected late September opening will likely mean takeout and potential outdoor street seating.
“Our lease is five years and hopefully we can be here for ten plus years, so we’re just really, really excited,” Phillips said.
You can find Cornelly at 601 Summit Ave E and watch for opening updates at cornellyseattle.com.
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That pizza looks amazing. Please update us when the restaurant opens!
Is there a vacant space on that block of Summit that the restaurant is moving into? I don’t remember a vacant storefront on that block
The Toscana pizza location as described that was also Itto’s for a minute.
I could have sworn that place turned into a tapas place after Toscana closed. And then that place went under and was bought out by one of the employees or something, and was supposed to reopen as some tapas-related Spanish cuisine or something.
And now it’s suddenly going to be a pizza place again? Confused am I.
If you need anyone to taste samples before you open my husband and I live a block away and can stop by anytime. Just sayin…that pizza looks delicious.