Donna Moodie

 Owner, Marjorie restaurant

Born in Jamaica, Donna's father died when she was young. Her mother, Marjorie, remarried a man who lived on Chicago's south side, moving the family when Donna was 5 years old. "This was a time before a lot of immigrants moved in and neighborhoods were very segregated. Our whole block was black. My slightly naïve mother would invite everyone over for dinner. Our black neighbors would say 'you don't invite white people over,' but my mom still did. Everyone came. During college break, she'd invite anyone over who didn't have family nearby. It wasn't formal; people would sit on the floor with plates on the their laps, tell stories, and have blender drinks. My mother was a self-trained cook. She'd decide to have bouillabaisse, then do the research, and head to the fish market. We were a mainstream, middle-income family. Dinner parties for 8 were considered large. She'd invite 20, and they'd stay until 2 a.m. It was what she'd done in Jamaica and she replicated it in the more discouraging environment in Chicago. It was a piece of Jamaican entertainment in a south side Chicago bungalow."

To get through college, Donna worked in restaurants. As time went on, she was convinced that this was her calling as opposed to working a 'normal' job. She was front of the house: waiting or bartending. While at Jerome's in Chicago, she asked to learn to bake, donating her time. She liked to bake, but didn't know how to do it professionally. She worked at the restaurant, then for their catering arm, eventually managing the catering business. She met her then husband, Marco, in Chicago. "I wanted to live in a different city and be challenged by it. We came up with four cities: Berkeley and Seattle because we knew people there, and Miami and New York. Marco nixed the last two immediately because we knew no one. We came to Seattle on vacation and the food tipped the scale for me. In Chicago, we shopped at specialty stores; we could get everything at Pike Market here."

They got jobs at restaurants around town: Serafina, Campagne. She and Marco wanted to start a small neighborhood spot, and liked Belltown as a quirky offshoot of downtown. "We were used to areas with a little edge, lots of diversity; the kind of place that attracts artists." They looked at the space that is now Tula's, but lost out. Going to work one day, she saw the space that eventually became Marco's. When they didn't get it, she called the landlord and said if something changed, they'd be willing to come right down and sign the papers. A week later, it was theirs. They acted as their own general contractor, feeling that someone else might over-design it, and wanting it to be charming. They opened in 1994 and it didn't close until 2013.

In 1997, the owners of a nearby business were looking to sell and although they had been approached by a number of people, they wanted to sell to someone who would make the process easy. They asked Donna and Marco, who took a look and decided to open a second restaurant. Donna had worked at Sole Mio in Chicago, a neighborhood spot that had customers coming in several times a week. That example inspired Lush Life, a regional Italian restaurant. Lush Life closed in 2002 when Marco and Donna divorced. Marco kept Marco's and suggested Donna keep Lush Life. Donna took time to decide if staying in the business was right. It was, but she wanted to do something inspired by her mom. She gutted the spot and created the atmosphere she wanted, calling it Marjorie after her mother.

When the Belltown building sold in 2002, she took another look at the business, decided it was still her passion, and found her new location on Capitol Hill. She acted as general contractor again, and with help from friends created her new space for Marjorie, with patio and private dining spaces.

July 2016