Matt’s in the Market

Learning the lay of the land

The fried catfish hits the pass with its cornmeal crust still crisp. At Matt’s in the Market in Seattle, Matt Fortner, Executive Chef, works that rhythm from a second-floor kitchen above Pike Place Market. Fortner was in the role by 2018, after cooking elsewhere in Seattle, including a chef post at Marjorie in Belltown. His first account of the room was not romantic. “This place is busy and complicated—I have to learn the lay of the land before we start to play.” That is the useful sentence here, because the restaurant asks a cook to read traffic as much as product: lunch pressure, market deliveries, the turn from sandwiches to dinner, the sightline between kitchen and dining room. Fortner inherited a place with its own lineage. Matt Janke opened it in 1996 in a 23-seat room that had been a coffee-focused space called Counter Intelligence, cooking with a couple of burners, one small oven, and little prep area. Dan Bugge, who had worked for 11 years as a fishmonger and fish-thrower at Pike Place Fish Market, bought into the restaurant around 2006 and 2007, and the house later broke through into an adjacent corner space. Fortner’s task is not to erase that sequence. He keeps the staples legible, especially the fried catfish sandwich, while letting the dinner menu carry his own hand.

Market cooking without a fixed script

The method depends on the staircase. Fish, produce, meat, cheese, and dairy come from the market below, and the menu shifts with what the stalls can give the kitchen that day. The restaurant began with constraint as discipline: 23 seats, a small oven, and almost no margin for prep. After the 2007 expansion, the room grew to around 60 seats, the kitchen became more capable, and the bar became part of the evening’s shape. The cooking still reads as market-first rather than concept-first. Lunch holds onto direct structure: the fried catfish sandwich, with cornmeal-crusted fish, sambal mayonnaise, shredded romaine, and soft potato bread, has stayed in place for more than 20 years. Oysters on the half shell keep the work close to the source. Seafood stew, chowder, whole fish when available, and housemade pasta give dinner more room to lengthen the gesture. Fortner’s Italian influence appears there, but the plate still has to answer to Pike Place, where a delivery can change the day’s work before service begins.

Above the stalls, within earshot

The room sits on the second floor of the Corner Market Building, with arched windows over the market and a view that can catch the neon sign, the stalls, and Elliott Bay beyond them. Inside, checkerboard floors and spare urban details keep the room close, more counter than stage. Conversation carries, but it does not drown the pass. The place has the warmth of a diner and the proportions of a small café, with seafood moving through a kitchen that has always had to make proximity count. Fortner has described being glad to be back downtown, seeing people each day he had not seen in 10 years. In that sentence, the dining room becomes part of the station: guests return, market workers pass through, and the kitchen measures itself against people who know when the catfish is right.

The dish that holds the line

Matt’s has a sandwich that survived ownership, expansion, and chef changes. Fortner can move the dinner menu toward pasta or seasonal seafood, yet the house still has to make room for the fried catfish sandwich. The next service begins with that same practical question: what came up from the market, and how cleanly can the kitchen put it on the plate at Matt’s in the Market.