PH-born chef to lead top Seattle fine-dining restaurant Canlis

Aisha Ibrahim is replacing an James Beard Award-winning chef at Canlis in Seattle.

SEATTLE – Canlis, a historic fine-dining restaurant in Seattle serving Pacific Northwest fare since 1950s has hired Philippine-born chef Aisha Ibrahim to be its executive chef.

Ibrahim is replacing James Beard Award-winning chef Brady Williams who will open his own restaurant later this year. Ibrahim is the first woman and woman of color, and the seventh chef  in 70 years to lead Canlis.

Ibrahim grew up in West Virginia and attended Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in San Francisco. She went on to serve as sous chef at California’s Manres, a prestigious three-Michelin-star restaurant, and followed that experience with international stints in Spain and Thailand, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

She had planned to open her own fine dining restaurant in Bangkok, but the pandemic upset her plans.

The Canlis brothers flew Ibrahim, 35, in from Bangkok for a week-long interview earlier this year that ended in a seven-course dinner she cooked for the Canlis family and Williams in February.

“She blew us out of the water,” Brian Canlis told The Seattle Times.