“Seattle is close to Barcelona,” says chef Oscar Amador.

He means spiritually, or at least in terms of landscape — both cities are close to the mountains and the sea, both have a ridiculous abundance of high-quality produce and seafood. Amador was raised in a little town 15 miles away from Barcelona and made a name for himself running restaurants in Las Vegas, where he earned a James Beard Award nomination in 2023. (Vegas is a long ways from Barcelona no matter how you slice it.) His latest project is La Loba, a Spanish restaurant inside the 1 Hotel in South Lake Union that will open next week on Tuesday, May 6.

“For me, here is like a paradise,” says Amador of the bounty of fresh ingredients available in Seattle. “I would love to go to the market every day and buy things and come back to the kitchen and start cooking, but it’s kind of hard to do that at a hotel.”

Amador and his team have committed to sourcing 85 to 90 percent of their food from within 100 miles, so from both Western Washington and east of the Cascades. They’ll be leaning on providers like Beecher’s — whose truffled cheese shows up on a smoked candy montadito (open-faced sandwich) — and Coro Foods, one of the region’s top charcuterie companies.

Mark Feigenbaum

The interior of La Loba is heavy on the vegetation and the bar resembles the inside of a tree trunk, at least if the tree trunk was itself inside a luxury hotel (rooms at 1 Hotel generally run above $300 a night). Guests can partake of a cocktail menu that’s heavy on the gin and tonics — a Barcelona staple — or a wine list that features bottles from Washington State and Spain.

One twist that doesn’t necessarily come form the local terroir or Amador’s native cuisine is that the kitchen will be trying to save and reuse as many food scraps as possible through drying, freezing, and fermentation. It’s an initiative that Amador says aligns with 1 Hotel’s commitment to sustainability (all of the brand’s properties are LEED certified).

La Loba is not quite a tapas restaurant, but Amador says that the small plates on the menu “shine the most.” His favorite is one of the most traditional: potatoes bravas, or thinly sliced potatoes that are fried and served with a spicy sauce. Even that staple of Spanish cooking is relatively rare in Seattle, because there aren’t that many Spanish restaurants around (though there are some, like Capitol Hill’s excellent Maripili Tapas Bar). Another one is surely welcome news.

La Loba will open on May 6 inside 1 Hotel Seattle at 2125 Terry Avenue. For more information go here.