Retro-Futurism at 600 Feet:

Dining at the Needle

Eats essay for The Stranger,7/23/96

While the future the Space Needle predicted (it helped inspire the look of The Jetsons) never happened, and the age it came from passed long ago, it remains a beloved symbol of Seattle and an icon of a bygone belief in a late-industrial, pre-computer tomorrow. It’s an almost unbelievable blend of retro kitsch and eternal beauty. Except for the ’80s-vintage 100-foot-level addition (now used only for occasional banquets), its size, scale, and shape are as near as modern American architecture gets to Pythagorean perfection.

Seattleites love the Needle so much they’ll forgive the legendary cost and mediocrity of its restaurant, almost. (You can tell a real local kid: She’ll have 100 Space Needle scale models, ball-point pens, ash trays, whiskey bottles, postcards, and posters, but has never been in the real one.)

I’m looking at a still of Elvis’s scene in the Space Needle restaurant from It Happened at the World’s Fair. The revolving, donut-shaped dining room evokes what was considered wondrous in ’62: Space Patrol uniforms on the servers, fine suits and dresses on the clientele, rich paneling on the walls, rich food on the tables.

In its 35th year, the uniforms and the decor have become more commonplace (the walls are now as grey as the view on an overcast winter day; the ceiling has that speckled-relief effect made infamous by suburban condos). The food, which always was commonplace, has remained so.

The Needle’s a product of what passes for “old money” in this young city. It’s always been a private endeavor, adjacent to but not part of the city-owned Seattle Center. It was built by mega-contractor Howard S. Wright, with backing from developer Ned Skinner and hotel tycoon Eddie Carlson. The late architect-activist Victor Steinbrueck claimed to have played a role in the design, but Wright’s discounted the extent of Steinbrueck’s participation. Both Steinbrueck and Wright claimed to have been inspired by Stuttgart’s TV tower (more explicitly cloned in Toronto’s CN Tower). For many years the restaurant was managed by Carlson’s Western International (now Westin) Hotels; the Needle itself was owned by a five-partner consortium headed by Wright and entitled (our neopagan readers will love this!) the Pentagram Corp. The operation’s now united as the Space Needle Corp.

Tom Robbins called it a phallic symbol, claiming the old Grandma’s Cookies neon sign at north Lake Union as its feminine counterpart. He was only half right. It’s tall and cylindrical, but also curvy and gracious; you rise up to penetrate it, arriving in a cornerless world of padded surfaces and comforting joys.

Upon checking in at the bottom, the efficient staff confirms your reservation and warns you how many elevator loads are ahead of you. Despite a large group from a software company waiting in line ahead of me, it was soon my turn to take the smooth 42-second ride up 600 feet to the “top house.” Quicker than you can adjust your inner ears, you’re in the stark grey topside waiting area. The excessively (but not insuffrably) perky wait staff soon seated me at a non-window table, near two middle-aged couples from Philadelphia freely expressing their giddiness at the whole top-of-the-world sensation. The whole room had the air of low-key (and, at some tables, higher-key) celebrations: Contracts signed, wedding dates set, relatives reunited, jobs and homes temporarily abandoned.

Aside from the diners’ happy talk, the only aural accompaniment to my meal came from the steady, reassuring hum of the turntable motors ever-so-slowly sending me around to view the panorama of city, sound, sky, and (since it was sunny) mountains. I couldn’t see my house (a bigger building was in the way), but everything else was laid out like a miniature movie set for Godzilla to stomp on; the Harbor Island container docks looked like a stack of grey Lego bricks.

The giant turntable has grown jittery over the years. It rumbles and vibrates beneath your feet, and staggers for a second every few minutes. The thing goes all the way around in an hour; with the efficient service and pre-prepared dishes, you can expect to be finished by the time you again spot the buildings that were in front of you when you sat down.

While the restaurant’s menu has evolved, the emphasis remains on fancy-but-not-too-fancy meals for tourists, business travelers, and locals hosting out-of-town relatives. It makes no claims to be on the cutting edge of cuisine. Aside from a fried vegetarian penne ($24.95), the dinner menu is neatly divided into “Entrees” (bigger, costlier versions of what your parents would order in a steak house on their anniversary) and “Signature Entrees” (that seafood stuff the tourists hear you’ve got to get when you’re in Seattle). Everything is soft-textured and mildly seasoned, so everyone from grandma to your finicky preteen niece can enjoy it.

My entree choice, the Chicken Parmesan ($24.95), was a huge slab of chicken, breaded and baked to you-need-no-teeth tenderness, with melted chese and a pizza-esque sauce. Not the worst of its type I’ve ever had, but nothing you couldn’t get better and/ or cheaper on Terra Firma. It came with two scoops of reconstituted mashed potatoes, carrot slices and string beans. The butter-pat foil containers and the sugar pouches carried the telltale logo of Food Services of America–the empire of that Thomas Stewart guy from Vashon, patron of right-wing politicians and subsidizer of John Carlson’s think tank.

If I were to recommend a dish to you, it’d be the prime rib ($27.95 to $31.95). The demise of Jake O’Shaugnessey’s has left a vacancy in the Lower Queen Anne vicinity for this melt-in-your-mouth delicacy. It’s cured, so it’s safely cooked even when it’s all red and fleshy on the inside. Those celebrating on a budget can settle for the smoked-salmon appetizer ($9.95).

Any good kitschy “special occasion” restaurant needs a special drink or dessert. The Needle disappointed in both areas. They were out of the take-home ceramic Needle-shaped glass that’s supposed to come with the Mai Tai-esque Space Needle Blast-Off Punch ($18). They did have the World Famous Lunar Orbiter dessert ($5.50); but once the dry-ice fog from the lower compartment of its special cup has steams away, you’ve just got a lot of ice cream covered with mini M&M’s.

You can get the drinks without the entrees, at the cocktail lounge on the non-revolving Observation Deck just above the restaurant. The view’s just as spectacular as it is from the restaurant, though you have to walk around it yourself (the outer walkway’s all fenced in nowadays, to be jump-proof). And the atmosphere’s far more festive, with cheery tourists and screaming kids running to and fro. The gift-shop merchandise is astounding. You can play with the penny-flattening machine or the coin-op telescope (not powerful enough to peer into hotel rooms). Tucked away in a corner there’s a computer kiosk normally displaying an Internet tourist-guide site, but you can follow links to the Sub Pop Mega Mart site and leave it there. And on summer Friday evenings, the amplified melodies from the Pain in the Grass concerts waft upward beautifully. I like the band Zeke normally, but it never sounded as hot as it did from 600 feet away.