Ten Years on Queen Anne Hill: A Timeline of Eden Hill Restaurant
January 12, 2026
Eden Hill Restaurant opened on September 4, 2015, in a narrow storefront at 2209 Queen Anne Ave N — one room, one kitchen, twenty-four seats. Ten years later, almost to the day, it closed. In between were three James Beard Foundation semifinalist nods, a national Taste America tour stop, and a decade of nightly-changing menus that never quite settled into a signature dish. Here's how that decade unfolded.
2015: Opening on Queen Anne Hill
Chef Maximillian Petty, a Seattle-area native who'd cooked his way through kitchens across the country — including Crème Café Lounge, King Estate Winery, and Olivia — returned home to open Eden Hill. The name was a small piece of neighborhood history: Queen Anne Hill wasn't always called Queen Anne Hill, and one of its earlier names was Eden Hill. The restaurant borrowed it as a quiet tribute.
2017: Taste America and a Growing Reputation
By its second year, Eden Hill had become a regular name on Seattle "best of" lists. In September 2017, the James Beard Foundation brought its Taste America tour through Seattle, drawing on chefs from restaurants like Eden Hill to represent the city's dining scene on a national stage. Local press coverage that fall covered everything from a five-chef pop-up collaboration to features on where to spend a serious night out in the city — Eden Hill included.
2018: James Beard Semifinalist Recognition
February 2018 brought the restaurant's most visible national recognition: chef Maximillian Petty was named a James Beard Foundation Rising Star Chef semifinalist, one of a small group of Washington chefs to receive the nod that year. It was the first of three separate semifinalist nominations Petty would earn over Eden Hill's run — a distinction that made the restaurant one of the more consistently recognized kitchens in the neighborhood, even as it kept a low profile by design.
A Decade of Nightly Change
What held steady across those years wasn't a dish — it was the restlessness. The kitchen printed a new menu every day, and in a typical month roughly forty percent of the à la carte lineup turned over entirely. Regulars didn't come back for a signature plate; they came back to see what the kitchen was working through that week, whether that was sourdough with cultured goat cheese or a wagyu ribeye with scallion miso mayo.
2025: Closing, Ten Years to the Day
Eden Hill Restaurant served its last guests and closed permanently on September 4, 2025 — exactly ten years after it first opened. It was a deliberate, quiet ending, in keeping with a restaurant that had never chased attention to begin with. This site exists to keep that decade on the record: the final menu, the people who ran the dining room and kitchen, and the press coverage the restaurant picked up along the way.