Preservation Kitchen keeps culinary tradition alive at historic Kaysner home

It was less than two years ago that a former Seattle nightclub owner had his sights set on Bothell’s historic Kaysner residence for the location of a strip club.

Today, the venue is home to Preservation Kitchen, a new restaurant that opened Sept. 2.

Those with puritanical sensibilities can stop worrying about what’s inside. The current tenants don’t have anything “delightfully tacky” planned for this venture.

Susan and Gary Southwick created the establishment to bring fine dining to Bothell’s downtown area, something they say has been lacking in recent years.

Preservation Kitchen is a departure from the couple’s other local eatery, the Main Street Ale House, which features pub food.

Chef Ivan Szilak describes his food at this new restaurant as “Midwest country meets northern Italian trattoria.”

The dinner menu features gnocchi, thyme-scented halibut cheeks, rack of wild boar and mushroom risotto.

Other fare includes crisp pork-belly sandwiches with arugula and heirloom tomato for lunch, strawberry and rhubarb salad for a starter and fried apple pie for dessert.

The Preservation Kitchen crew is committed to using locally grown, organic ingredients whenever feasible.

“We’re really fortunate to have everything available to us in the northwest,” Szilak said. “We have local farmers, wineries and even distilleries.”

Ninety percent of the wine will come from local sources, according to wine manager Adrienne Hansen-Rahrovi.

“My goal is to support the little guys — the small wineries that people might not know about,” she said.

The cost for a full meal ranges between $25 and $55 a person, excluding drinks.

Hansen-Rahrovi has promised to keep her wine prices at a cost that’s only slightly higher than retail cost.

“I want to stay as far away as possible from the two- to three-hundred percent (markup) that’s typical with restaurants,” she said. “We want to give people an opportunity to enjoy a meal with good wine.”

Preservation Kitchen is located at the site of what used to be the Relais De Lyon until 1996.

The restaurant offered French cuisine reflecting chef Gerard Parrat’s time studying under celebrated culinary artists like Paul Bocuse and Jean Louise Palladin, both of whom scribed their signatures on a wall outside Szilak’s office.

Entrepreneur Robert Davis tried to establish an adult-entertainment business on the historic property, but the deal never panned out.

“To be anything other than a restaurant would have been blasphemous,” Szilak said. “Talk about upsetting the French-chef ghosts of the world.”

The Southwicks remodeled the 1916 Kaysner Home to prepare it for their new business, restoring the Italian tile and Douglas fir wood floors and landscaping the grounds.

“There aren’t a lot of original things left in Bothell,” Susan said. “We wanted to preserve the property and the lifestyle of buying local and supporting the community around you.”

Preservation Kitchen, located at 17121 Bothell Way N.E., can seat 60 guests on the main floor and up to 15 people in upper-level private dining rooms.

• Visit www.preservationkitchen.com for additional information, or call (425) 408-1306 to make reservations.

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