The Fat Hen – Not Little Red Hen!
Recommended by: The cashier at Wandering Goose(RIP 2020)recommended Fat Hen as a suggestion. We’d heard of Fat Hen , but we’d never been there.
Description on the The Fat Hen’s website: The Fat Hen is a neighborhood café serving breakfast & lunch along with handcrafted coffee drinks, house-made pastries, tea, fresh squeezed juices, local & import beer and wine, mimosas, and more. The Fat Hen seats up to 25 guests, and reservations are not accepted. Please note that the menus below are sample menus only; please inquire about our seasonal specials and current menu highlights!
Neighborhood/Type: Phinney Ridge
Address: 1418 NW 70th St, Seattle, WA 98117
What we ate/drank: Alla Boscaiola 12.50 two eggs in house-made tomato sauce with sausage, mushroom & mozzarella. Chicken Sandwich 16.5. Buttermilk fried chicken breast, calabrian chili aioli, cabbage slaw, house-made spicy pickle. Served with small side salad. Cortado
Comments: Before we get into our review of The Fat Hen, we have a funny story to tell. About 5 years ago, friends of ours recommended The Fat Hen to my wife as a place we should visit due to their great brunches.
When my wife relayed the message to me, all I heard was “hen” and I assumed they were talking about Little Red Hen, which I’d never been to, but knew about as the de facto country line dancing establishment in Seattle. My wife was new to Seattle at the time, so she assumed I knew what I was talking about when I said, “Little Red Hen? Really?
I never knew they served breakfasts. And never heard anybody say they were great.” So of course we had to check out Little Red Hen for brunch. Those of you who don’t know Little Red Hen, it’s a lovable divey bar with the service to match. Here’s a picture of Little Red Hen:
So we go there on a Saturday morning at about 9:00. The place opens at 8:00. There is not a soul in the place. I said to my wife, “If this is such a great brunch place, why is nobody here”?
There was one lady there who was our host, server and bartender. She gave us menus and we ordered. If I remember correctly, it was your normal breakfast stuff-eggs, bacon, hash browns, white toast, etc.
We order and she says, “You guys will have to wait a bit. Our cook just called and he’s hung over and I just woke him up. He lives real close though, so he’ll be here shortly”.
We’re already there drinking Bloody Marys, so we just wait. He did come shortly and our breakfast was fine, nothing special. We ask the server for our check and she busts out a pen, grabs a cardboard coaster from a table and writes the price of our meal on the back of the coaster and hands it to us! That was our bill. We looked at each other and laughed.
A few weeks later we saw our friends and told them about our experience at Little Red Hen and asked them why they liked it so much? They looked at us like we were insane, “The Fat Hen, not Little Red Hen!”
On to The Fat Hen: Like Mike’s Noodle House, Il Corvo(RIP 2020), Wandering Goose(RIP 2020), The Fat Hen is small on space and big on popularity, so you’ll most likely be waiting for a table. But of these small places, Fat Hen is by far the tiniest. If you come with more than 2 people, good luck to you. If you come with more than 4, I’ll give you credit for being gutsy.
The space seats only 25 people and even with just 25 seats, the space is so small it feels cramped. There were actually a few daring folks who came in with kids in bassinets and even that was a challenge to find any space to lay the bassinet down. The place is well lit and bright, though. If you are waiting for a table, they will take a drink order from you while you wait. I ordered a Cortado.
They have some small side dishes and salads, but there main dishes ate their Chicken Sandwich, Benedicts and Egg Bakes.
The latter two dishes have variations where you can change the ingredients. For example for the Benedicts you can have Dungeness crab, salmon, prosciutto, pancetta or Florentine. They don’t have a huge menu, but I think it allows them to really perfect the dishes they do have.
I ordered the Chicken Sandwich and my wife ordered what appears to be their most popular dish, Alla Boscaiola, which comes in a skillet and includes two eggs, sausage, mushroom and mozzarella in a their house-made tomato sauce.
As you can see from the picture of the chicken sandwich below, the chicken breast was bursting out of the bun. The chicken was tender and lightly seasoned and matched well with the tartness of the aioli and pickle and came with a side salad . I enjoyed the sandwich and would recommend it albeit at quite a hefty price tag of $16.50.
The Alla Boscaiola is definitely an instagrammable looking dish and not one I’ve seen anywhere else in Seattle. It’s simple ingredients make it one of those dishes that seems so simple to make at home, but difficult to replicate due to the superior ingredients used here and the expertise needed to cook it. The bread that comes with it is the perfect tool to dip and sop up all that sauce.
Summary: The space is really beautiful, but hard to enjoy when the seating is so close together and the rest of the available space is being taken by those waiting for a table. The food is also beautifully presented and tasty, but the prices a bit steep. The service was great. With such limited space, they do a good job of managing the number of parties waiting.
Of course they want to turn tables as quickly as possible, but we never felt hurried. We did feel guilty though about those waiting so we tried to balance enjoying our brunch, but being conscientious of those waiting. The Fat Hen would be a perfect place to visit on a weekday morning while catching up with an out of town guest one on one.
Ratings:
Atmosphere: 4.50
Service: 5.00
Food/Drinks: 4.50
Bang for the Buck: 4.00
Overall: 4.50
Locals Only Factor: “Locals Only” grading-We’ll assign a grading as to how “local” a place is.
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- Well known or Touristy. Most locals don’t go there unless they have business dinners or visitors in town.
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- Most locals know about it
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- Locals “in the know” know about it
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- Only those who live close by know about it.
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- You’re in on the secret. Don’t tell anybody!
Servers recommendations to visit in the future: The person making coffee drinks and acting as cashier suggested as another popular brunch place nearby in Ballard- Porkchop & Co.
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