Wooden City is serving its final dinner service at its Pacific Avenue dining room tomorrow, Tuesday, before the bustling downtown favorite trades its famously tight quarters for a much larger home on Broadway. The move closes the book on a snug Pac Ave era, where seats and bar stools were notoriously hard to come by, and kicks off a new chapter with more kitchen firepower and room for private events.
The new Broadway home
The owners are relocating Wooden City to the ground-floor space at 1102 Broadway, a high-ceilinged unit with exposed beams and a mezzanine slated for private events. Trade coverage puts the buildout at roughly 6,500 to 7,000 square feet with an estimated 160 seats, according to What Now. The property listing notes major kitchen upgrades, including new ducting for the wood-fired oven, a walk-in cooler and an upgraded fire suppression system, with several hundred thousand dollars earmarked for the conversion, per Lee & Associates. Those details were later rolled into a TNT Diner roundup on Yahoo.
Pac Ave's final service and the short transition
The Pacific Avenue dining room will close after service tomorrow, with reservations already limited for the last night as the team preps for the move. Owners Abe Fox, Jon Green and Eddie Gulberg told The News Tribune that executive chef Lili Mancini, bar manager Alex King and general manager Erin Conners Bergfield will all transition to the Broadway location. They also noted that the Pac Ave Resy listing still lets people join a notify list for cancellations, and said they expect to reveal the finished Broadway dining room by the end of the month.
Owners' reaction
“We are really excited to be open on Broadway,” co-owner Abe Fox said during a sneak-peek visit, according to The News Tribune. Staff who walked through the new kitchen and mezzanine said the additional room should make it easier to add menu items and host more private events than the Pac Ave space ever allowed.
What comes next for Pac Ave
Fox, Green and Gulberg plan to keep the Pac Ave lease and flip the smaller storefront into a bar-first concept built around Pacific Northwest producers and cocktails, rather than shuttering the address outright. Local reporting says the new vision leans on a focused bar program and a tighter kitchen footprint, with the goal of keeping that stretch of Pac Ave lively late into the night even after Wooden City’s main dining room shifts to Broadway. For now, the Pac Ave spot is expected to operate in transition mode while the Broadway restaurant ramps up service, according to recent coverage.
How to snag a seat before the move
If you are determined to get one last meal at the Pac Ave room, your best bet is to stalk the restaurant’s Resy page for cancellations and sign up for the notify list, then keep an eye on Wooden City’s social channels for any last-minute walk-in updates. Expect a brief adjustment period as staff settle into the new kitchen; past Wooden City openings and sibling locations suggest the group intends to keep service moving as smoothly as possible during the switch. For more background on the ownership group and its other outposts, check earlier coverage of Wooden City’s openings in the region and beyond.
