Ray’s Boathouse

May at the seafood station

Copper River salmon arrives in May, and Kevin Murray, Executive Chef at Ray’s Boathouse in Ballard, Seattle, lets that run set the kitchen’s spring tempo. The fish comes from Alaska with enough richness to carry a plate without much help, which suits a house built around the discipline of seafood rather than the decoration of it. Murray has held the Executive Chef post at Ray’s Boathouse, Cafe & Catering since 2020, after training at University of Washington and working as a summer employee at Agua Verde Paddle Club in Portage Bay. His language for the job is stewardship: he has spoken of Ray’s as a large ship, with traditions to maintain, a crew to mind, and waters to respect. That reading fits the station. On Shilshole Bay, seafood is governed by water temperature, run timing, weather, freight, and the short window when a fish is ready for the pass. Murray has also said, “Ray’s provided me opportunities to learn and grow, and it’s really important to pay it forward.” The apprenticeship here is partly formal, partly inherited through service, prep, buying, and repetition.

A program built from boats and timing

The method at Ray’s begins before the fish reaches the bench. The restaurant’s modern form opened in June 1973, when Russ Wohlers, Earl Lasher, and Duke Moscrip turned Ray Lichtenberger’s former boat rental and bait house into a full-service seafood restaurant. In 1976, the house secured its own wholesale fish buyer’s license, giving it a direct path to arriving boats and the crews that brought in the catch. That decision still matters because seafood quality is perishable in a way that resists abstraction. Murray’s spring cue is Copper River salmon; another signature is Roasted Sablefish in Sake Kasu, a plate he served as the second course for Ray’s FareStart Guest Chef Night menu at FareStart Restaurant in Seattle. Sablefish brings oil and depth, Sake Kasu brings fermentation, jasmine rice steadies the plate, and charred cabbage, quick pickled cucumbers, honey soy, and scallion oil set the edges. The craft is not excess. It is control, timing, and the refusal to bury the fish.

The room above Shilshole Bay

The room keeps the water in view while the pass works through salmon, Dungeness crab, sablefish, cioppino, and clam chowder. Ray’s began on this site in 1939, when Ray Lichtenberger moved his boat rental and bait house to Shilshole Bay, and the old working-water logic has not fully left the building. The red RAY’S sign went up in 1952 and still flashes from the dock, less as nostalgia than as a marker for a place that has had to keep rebuilding its method. Fires in 1987 and on May 23, 1997 interrupted the house; reopenings followed in April 1988 and July 1997. The dining room is polished, nautical, and calm enough for conversation, but the better texture is practical: fish coming in, wine moving to tables, the kitchen watching the season rather than forcing one.

What stays in the hands

Ray’s marked its 50th anniversary in 2023, a useful number only because the work has stayed close to its original proposition: seasonal Pacific Northwest seafood, handled simply, with relationships doing as much labor as technique. Murray’s next plate is still tied to the water more than the calendar copy around it. In spring, the station returns to Copper River salmon from Alaska.