Two of the most talked-about restaurant closures on Winslow Way happened within a block of each other, in the same six-month stretch, and the people who took over both leases made an unusual choice. On a ferry-town main street, the easy move is to build for the day-tripper: bigger dining room, faster turns, a menu that reads well to someone who's only in town for an afternoon. Instead, both new owners shrank the flagship experience and said, plainly, that they were building for the person who already lives here.
That's a small detail with a real effect on how your week actually runs if you're already a Winslow regular. Here's what changed, what didn't, and how to plan around it.
The Same Six Months, Two Storefronts
Chef Brendan McGill closed Seabird in the fall of 2025 and reopened the space as Kingfisher, rolling it out in three phases: a morning market on November 15, wine bar service starting November 19, and a ticketed supperclub launching November 30, according to the Bainbridge Island Review. The format is unlike anything else McGill's Hitchcock Restaurant Group runs on the island: an open market seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., a wine bar Wednesday through Saturday from 4 to 9 p.m., and a supperclub capped at 20 seats for a five-course dinner at $150 a person.
A block away, in the former Restaurant Marché space, Sweetwater Tavern opened March 17, co-owned by chef Pete Osborne and Callie Tinney. Osborne moved to Bainbridge from the Bay Area in 2016 and Tinney relocated from Nashville around the same time, according to PNW Bainbridge, and years later their paths crossed over a shared interest in building something for the neighborhood rather than the ferry line. Osborne put it directly to the Review: they wanted the restaurant to be "a place for locals."
"You shouldn't have to wait until Friday for oysters on the island," Tinney told PNW Bainbridge.
What Each One Actually Offers
The two spaces don't compete with each other so much as they answer the same question in different registers.
| Kingfisher | Sweetwater Tavern | |
|---|---|---|
| Replaced | Seabird | Restaurant Marché |
| Everyday format | Market 9am–4pm daily; wine bar Wed–Sat 4–9pm | Dinner Tue–Sat, 4–9pm, closed Sun and Mon |
| Special-occasion format | Supperclub, 20 seats, $150/person, five courses | 10-seat oyster bar with interactive shucking |
| Sourcing | Produce and prepared foods sold daily at the market | Oysters from Hama Hama and Moonlight Oyster Co., produce from Butler Green Farms and Loki Farms |
Sweetwater leans into a '70s Pacific Northwest revival look, with a new 10-seat bar built specifically for watching oysters shucked in front of you, according to a description on Bainbridge Island's community business page. The oyster sourcing and produce partnerships came from reporting by What Now ahead of the opening.
The Room That Takes a Month, the Seat That Doesn't
Here's the part that's easy to miss if you only skim the openings. Both operators split their business into two very different products, and neither is trying to fill a big room with strangers.
Kingfisher's supperclub is the smaller, harder-to-get half. Twenty seats, $150 a head, and McGill has said the point is to get back into a rhythm his previous restaurants didn't quite have room for. "It's also exciting to get back into the birthday and anniversaries game," he told the Review when Kingfisher opened. That's a room built for people who book a month out and come back for the next occasion, not a room built to seat a ferry's worth of visitors on a Saturday.
Sweetwater runs the opposite math. The 10-seat oyster bar is a specialty seat, but the restaurant's actual bet is the daily oyster happy hour and a menu Osborne has described as approachable enough to eat "a couple times a week." The tourist traffic that comes off the ferry is treated as a bonus, not the business plan.
Put next to each other, the pattern holds: the new tenants on Winslow Way aren't building bigger rooms to catch more foot traffic. They're building a small, expensive, hard-to-get room to fund a bigger, cheaper, easy-to-return-to one, and pointing both at the same customer, the person who already has a Bainbridge address.
The Reshuffling Wasn't Only About Restaurants
Restaurants weren't the only leases that changed hands on Winslow Way this cycle. A record and vintage shop that had been in town for about a year relocated to a spot next to a local apothecary and tea shop, and two neighborhood retail favorites combined into a single storefront in the Winslow Grove building, now selling fashion, gifts, and home goods under one roof. None of it rises to the level of the restaurant swaps, but it's a reminder that a downtown this size can shift meaningfully in a single year without a single new building going up.
What Stayed Exactly the Same
For everything that changed, the two most reliable weeknight fallbacks didn't move an inch. As a recent roundup on Bainbridge dining from Vashon Island Living put it, "any other night, Sweetwater's bar seats, Harbour Public House's deck on Eagle Harbor, or Bruciato for pizza" cover the nights that don't require a plan. Harbour Public House's deck over the harbor and Bruciato's wood-fired pizza remain the same low-friction options they've always been. The new formats sit next to the old ones rather than replacing them.
Building a Week Around It
The same Vashon Island Living piece made a claim worth sitting with: Bainbridge in July and August "used to reward showing up," but "in 2026 they reward planning ahead." For a resident, that's less a warning than a scheduling tip. Here's roughly how a week runs if you're paying attention:
- Wednesday — Battle Point Park's free evening concert series. "If it's a Wednesday, Battle Point," as the same piece notes.
- First Friday, May through October — the Art Walk turns Town Square into an evening market with local vendors, food trucks, and live music from 6 to 8 p.m., per Kitsap.love's island guide.
- Saturday — the Bainbridge Island Farmers Market at Town Square by City Hall, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., running April through November.
- Any other night — Sweetwater's bar seats, Harbour Public House's deck, or Bruciato, no reservation required.
- Special occasions — book Kingfisher's supperclub or Sweetwater's oyster bar well ahead. Both are small by design.
None of these are new events invented for this year. What's new is the payoff for glancing at the calendar on a Monday instead of deciding on a Friday afternoon. A downtown this compact means two changed leases can shift the whole rhythm of a week, and that's part of what makes Winslow feel like a place with a memory rather than a strip of interchangeable storefronts.
If you already live here, none of this requires you to do anything differently except maybe book ahead more than you used to. If Winslow's rhythm, the market on Saturday, the concert on Wednesday, the oyster happy hour that doesn't wait for Friday, is part of why you love where you live, the Amy McFarland Team would love to talk with you about what else this stretch of the island has to offer, whether that's for you or for someone you know who's thinking about making Bainbridge home.
