Canlis is credited with having invented what is now known as Pacific Northwest cuisine, which puts an emphasis on fresh, local ingredients including seafood, game meats, and wild plants, and is influenced by Native American and Asian traditions. Indeed, four of the seven Executive Chefs in the restaurant’s seven-decade history—including the woman who currently holds the position, Aisha Ibrahim—have Asian heritage. She sees her role at Canlis as “exploring the region’s indigenous ingredients, the nuances of its micro-seasons, and the city’s historic role as a gateway to Asia.”
The atmosphere in Canlis reflects the building itself: storied but forward-looking, refined but simple, formal but open to the world. It is a place to dress up (suits or jackets are requested) but not to stiffen up. Instead, diners are encouraged to relax to the laid-back live piano music, enjoy the fantastic food, and savor the world-class service for which the restaurant is famed. One of the aims of the Canlis brothers and chef Ibrahim is to get away from the idea of fine dining as stuffy, serious, and detached, instead seeking to make a human connection with diners, whom Ibrahim often invites into the kitchen to meet the team and see behind the scenes. As she puts it, “fine dining can be fun.”
Ibrahim was born in the Philippines and raised in West Virginia. She discovered her passion for cooking after being obliged to give up a college basketball career following a serious knee injury. She dropped out of college the following year, enrolled at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, and has never looked back. Stints in various well-respected Bay Area restaurants culminated in a job as Sous Chef at Manresa, where she met chef Eneko Atxa. After training with him at his restaurant Azurmendi in the Basque Country, Spain, she was offered the job of Chef de Cuisine at Atxa’s restaurant in Thailand, Aziamendi. She gained further experience in some of Tokyo’s top restaurants, including Kagurazaka Ishikawa, Kohaku, L’Effervescence, and RyuGin. At this point she intended to open her own place in Thailand, but the Covid-19 pandemic scuppered her plans. That’s when the invitation to take over as Executive Chef at Canlis arrived, and despite only having visited Seattle once, Ibrahim was inspired to take the plunge.
In 2023, she received a Best New Chef of America award from Food & Wine.
Canlis was ranked one of the top 20 restaurants in America by Gourmet Magazine, while Food & Wine has listed it as “one of the 40 most important restaurants in the past 40 years.” It has received 22 consecutive Wine Spectator Grand Awards. Over its history, Canlis has been nominated for 15 James Beard Awards, winning three, including an Outstanding Wine Program award in 2017 and a Design Icon Award in 2019, a tribute to the remarkable building that houses it.
