Seattle is a city that deserves to be celebrated. The Asian persuasion runs deep in these parts of the world, but that’s not all that runs through these streets—or through the people I am lucky enough to call family now.
It’s hard to write about a city I love so much, yet one that broke me in more ways than most.
I don’t really know where to start when talking about Seattle.
After packing all my belongings into my Isuzu in New York, I headed West. I drove across a country I barely knew, chasing something I couldn’t really explain. When I finally landed in the Pacific Northwest—the PNW, as the locals call it—I had no idea just how much this place would grip me.
I arrived with a suitcase, a car and a head full of ideas.I didn’t come to Seattle to simply live here. I came to learn.
And Seattle has a wealth of knowledge to offer. Some of the biggest companies in the world started here. There is a certain entrepreneurial spirit in the city, a willingness to build something from nothing. I found that incredibly inspiring. But it wasn’t the companies that won me over.
It was the people and amazing food culture that it has in city. It was sitting at a Mariners game surrounded by strangers who somehow felt like friends. It was the autumns that seemed to walk straight out of a German fairy tale, with the colors changing almost overnight. It was the mountains, the water, the ferries, the rain and those strange little pockets of beauty you could stumble across without looking for them.
I wish I could say the same about the baseball.
I ended up in Ballard, a small fishing village that had somehow grown into one of Seattle’s most interesting neighborhoods. It was industrial, rough around the edges and full of character. At one stage, it seemed like there were more than 30 breweries within the neighborhood.
For a chef, it was a fascinating place to be.There was food everywhere. Farmers, fishermen, breweries, distilleries, small producers and people who genuinely cared about what they were putting on a plate. Seattle made me think differently about food and community.And eventually, I decided I wanted to build something here myself.
That became Kahlo & Loyal.
What started as an idea slowly became a real business. It became menus, suppliers, staff, permits, late nights, early mornings, spreadsheets, deliveries, events, dinners and conversations with people who believed in what we were trying to create.It became my life.And for a while, it felt like everything was coming together.We built something that was ours. We worked with local farmers. We cooked for people. We hosted events. We created dishes that told stories about where we came from and where we had traveled. We tried to create a place that felt different, something that reflected the way we saw food and hospitality.
There were moments when we stood in that space and thought, we actually did this.That feeling is difficult to explain to someone who has never put everything they have into something.Because when you build a business from the ground up, you don’t just invest money.
You invest yourself and your team.
Every failure feels personal cause people rely on you.
Every empty table feels personal.
Every successful night feels like a small victory.
And every problem follows you home.
Closing Kahlo & Loyal wasn’t simply closing a restaurant.
It felt like closing a chapter of my life.
I wasn’t closing because I had stopped believing in what we created. In many ways, I believed in it more than ever.I was leaving because sometimes survival means knowing when to stop fighting. That was one of the hardest lessons Seattle gave me.A city can love you and hate you at the same time. It can give you everything you thought you wanted and then take something from you that you didn’t realize you needed.
It can make you feel like an outsider one day and completely at home the next.
Seattle did all of that to me.It gave me friendships I never expected. It introduced me to people who became family. It challenged me as a chef. It challenged me as a businessman. It forced me to learn about things I never thought I’d have to learn and, perhaps most importantly, myself. There were times when I was angry at Seattle. There were times when I wondered why I had traveled all the way across the world to start over all alone, only to find myself fighting battles I never imagined I’d have to fight.
But then I’d walk outside.
I’d see the water.
I’d see the mountains.
I’d walk through Ballard.
I’d smell the rain and the pine.
I’d watch the leaves change.
I’d hear people laughing outside a bar on a cold evening.
And I’d remember why I fell in love with the place in the first place.
That’s the complicated thing about Seattle.
It never stopped being beautiful just because my life became difficult.
It never stopped being home.
I think that’s why writing about Seattle is so difficult
I came to Seattle wanting to learn.
I have learned more than I ever expected.I learned how to build something.I learned how quickly something could disappear.I learned that good intentions don’t always protect you.I learned that hard work doesn’t guarantee success.I learned that sometimes people disappoint you.I learned that sometimes cities do too.But I also learned that failure isn’t the opposite of success.Sometimes it’s simply one small part of the story.Seattle broke me in places I didn’t know could break.But it also rebuilt parts of me I didn’t know needed rebuilding.And perhaps that’s why, I can’t hate this city.
I can be angry with it.
I can question it.
I can be disappointed in it.
But I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving it, Because somewhere between the rain, the mountains, the fishing boats, the breweries, the autumn leaves, the kitchens, the Mariners games and all the great friends I made along the way, Seattle became a part of me. You can leave a city.But sometimes the city doesn’t leave you. Thank you Seattle for all the love and memories.
