Sheena Eliz brings new energy to Seattle’s Ciudad

This summer, Georgetown’s Mediterranean Ciudad restaurant quietly announced its new chef, just as Sheena Eliz loves to do most things.

“I’m straightforward but a little quiet, especially when I’m at work,” says Eliz, but her kitchen speaks for itself as she prepares to personalize the upcoming fall menu of dishes like sweet potato kibbe with lamb filling.

The five-year-old restaurant has gone through a number of chefs in its five years in business, including inaugural chef Nick Coffey, Eliz’s former Sitka & Spruce employee and current owner of Ursa Minor on Lopez Island. Eliz comes to Ciudad from the management of Anar, the vegetarian outlet of the Mamnoon owner Mama Group. She previously worked as the sous-chef for the same group under Jason Stratton at the opening of Mbar, and now she reunites with Stratton as he runs the kitchen of Mezzenotte, another place in Georgetown owned by Marcus Lalario, owned by Ciudad.

Eliz’s résumé reads like a list of the restaurants that have shaped the city’s scene over the past decade: she has also cooked at Anchovies & Olives, Terra Plata, and Bar Sajor.

“I didn’t know then what these places meant for Seattle,” she says. Before cooking, Eliz worked in a casino and didn’t go to cooking school until her department was closed. There one of her trainers gave her the advice that led her on such an impressive path: “Try to work for a place that you think you are not good enough for,” she says. “And then be good enough for it.”

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Courtesy Ciudad

Over time, this meant working with chefs like Coffey, Logan Cox (now cook / owner of Homer), and Brandon Kirksey (now cook / partner at Great Gold in Tahoe) who helped her cook and manage confidently without each other having to change from their natural calm. “I’ve worked with great people who made me feel great,” she says, “who tried to mold me into a badass.” Not that she needed too much help. When she entered Girin and asked Kirksey which station she wanted to work at, Eliz looked around the steakhouse kitchen full of men and said, “Grill”.

She learned about slaughtering Kirksey, part of her own mission of getting to know every part of the kitchen. “I tried my best, was a bit strategic,” says Eliz. “I had the feeling that I could never call myself a chef if I couldn’t slaughter a bit, make a pastry shop and know how to run a line.”

Now these skills come into play at Ciudad, where she includes a large grill on which she cooks dishes like ribs of lamb in spicy harissa barbecue sauce with rose, and she controls the dessert menu of dark chocolate pudding with tahini creme and cashew crumble. Eliz took over the kitchen this summer and had to curb her own plans and ambitions through the personnel battles.

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Courtesy Ciudad

“In the fall, I feel like the menu really reflects more of me and my personality,” says Eliz, who strives for a “natural, cozy, nutritious” menu, but with her fingerprint. “My background from the Pacific Northwest will always creep in,” she says, often in terms of the products she uses. She likes North African flavors and says her time at Mamnoon’s restaurants cemented her love for quality condiments. “I’ll never give up.” She currently has a falafel egg in the works – like a vegetarian scotch egg – and plans to use sugarcake squash in a shorbat adas (red lentil soup).

After a decade in some of Seattle’s top eateries, including everything from the casual vegetarian lunch counter to the ambitious high-end Korean steakhouse, Eliz is bringing renewed excitement to the five-year-old restaurant with her calm confidence and wide-ranging skills. The move pulls Ciudad out of the shadows of its shiny new sibling, Mezzanotte, and its well-known chef in Stratton, positioning the two as partners at the forefront of Georgetown’s restaurant scene.