Nestled in a cozy converted Craftsman house, Atoma dishes out innovative New American fare, weaving global influences and local ingredients into a delightful dining experience that feels both intimate and extraordinary.
"An Eater Award-winning restaurant recognized as a semifinalist for Best New Restaurant." - Harry Cheadle
"This cozy converted cottage in Wallingford provides a cute backdrop to some of the most innovative cooking going on in Seattle right now. The menu shifts often but past standouts have included include pressed duck with green mole, crumpets with kefir butter and fermented garlic honey, and a baked Alaska with cream cheese ice cream. Just whatever you do, get two of the savory rosette cookies that have become the signature dish here — you don’t want to argue with your date while trying to split one." - Jade Yamazaki Stewart, Harry Cheadle
"In 2023, Johnny and Sarah Courtney took over the Wallingford house that used to be home to feted organic restaurant Tilth and immediately started building their own legacy. The New York Times–endorsed savory rosette cookies with cheese and onion jam have become famous already, but there are so many highlights on this menu (though some of it changes with the seasons). The radish cake topped with delicate slices of geoduck is a sophisticated and unexpected way to serve the Northwest’s most famous bivalve. And for dessert, don’t miss the baked Alaska, an old-school dish that Johnny Courtney and his team somehow incorporate vegetables and herbs into. Like nearly everything at Atoma, it contains layers of flavors and nuance." - Eater Staff
"Few things feel less new than “new American.” Almost everyone uses local, fresh, and seasonal ingredients nowadays (or aspires to, anyway). Making your own pasta? Yawn. And thanks, but I already had my French comfort food-inspired classic made with wagyu and, of course, ramps. The more truly modern take on American food goes beyond locavorism to ignore the limits of locale — and culture and cuisine and background. Chef Johnny Courtney, who co-owns Seattle’s Atoma with his wife, Sarah, had cooked in Denver, Mexico, and Australia before spending several years at Canlis, the preeminent fine dining restaurant in Seattle. Those divergent influences are splattered all over the Atoma menu, but aren’t the only touchstones for what emerges: a more open, less rigid, and less nationalist template for American cooking. A beef tartare is lacquered with Hong Kong-style XO sauce made with local dried geoduck, the famous Pacific Northwest bivalve. Baked Alaska, that old-school American dessert, is livened up by an ice cream made of parsnips and meringue made from charred corn silk. Local lion’s mane mushrooms are breaded and fried katsu-style. Instead of bread service, Atoma offers sourdough crumpets — a riff on a breakfast favorite in the U.K. and Australia — with kefir butter and garlic honey. But perhaps the least conventionally American aspect of Atoma is its modesty. Tucked away inside an old Craftsman house in the quiet Wallingford neighborhood, it’s deliberately unshowy — as if all the remarkable things it does on and off the plate are a given. Of course the ingredients should be local. Of course modern cooking should gleefully ignore culinary borders. Of course a neighborhood restaurant can forge a new cuisine — a new, new American for all. — Harry Cheadle, Eater Seattle editor" - Eater Staff
"This sage-walled craftsman feels like an intimate hang at someone’s house—only if the host casually served half-portioned martinis in miniature glasses, or crispy radish cakes topped with paper-thin slices of geoduck. It’s a place that feels thoroughly fine-dining but fun, with Atoma’s creative vegetarian dishes leading the way. Gather some friends, go in on some excellent cocktails, and share savory rosette cookies filled with onion jam and farmer’s cheese, pounded lion’s mane mushrooms fried to resemble katsu, and the f*cking amazing crumpets." - aimee rizzo
