(Image: CHS)
A Starbucks experiment that began ten years ago on Capitol Hill is set to come to an end. Roy Street Coffee and Tea will close this spring.
The global coffee giant hasn’t yet responded to CHS’s inquiry about the planned closure but customers of the Roy at Broadway cafe have been told the location will close at the end of April.
An effort is already underway to “save” the indie-style Starbucks cafe: Continue reading
(Image: Monsoon)
Brother and sister restaurateurs Sophie and Eric Banh are marking 20 years of business on 19th Ave E. Their Vietnamese Seattle classic Monsoon will have a “20 Bucks for 20 Years” menu starting this weekend featuring “a handful of dishes that were very popular in the early years” and are still popular today.
We’re going to bet that the drunken chicken made the list.
Surviving two decades on the Hill’s quieter side, Monsoon has grown — literally — along with the neighborhood’s food and drink offerings. In 2014, it doubled its capacity, incorporating a bar, and adding a rooftop patio to the restaurant. “It’s amazing how the world turns around,” Eric Banh told CHS about Monsoon’s survival and expansion. “We almost became homeless in 2007. We survived. And now we’re growing. A little bit.” Continue reading
(Image: Melrose Market)
It’s no Neighbours but an iconic Capitol Hill property has been sold. Melrose Market, the preservation and locavore focused retail development home to Sitka and Spruce and Terra Plata, is now owned by the same real estate investment trust that owns the Broadway Market shopping center.
Public terms of the deal were not yet available from the county but the Puget Sound Business Journal is reporting a $15.5 million price tag. Continue reading
Oddfellows was a warm, inviting space, on a cold Capitol Hill day. Morgan, a well known face behind the bars of Pettirosso and the Unicorn, has been managing the restaurant since August. When she’s not keeping things moving at Oddfellows, she is an artist, a writer, and a screenprinter. The drink of choice was the Boozy Hot Cocoa made with a standard pour of Powers Irish Whiskey, house made chocolate syrup, and house made marshmallows. After mixing the liquids slowly, the marshmallows are heated, placed on top, and covered with a dusting of chocolate. Continue reading
It’s not exactly beach weather but Julian Hagood, the owner and chef behind Capitol Hill’s Harry’s Fine Foods, is already thinking about summer.
Plans for Harry’s Beach House are in motion to transform a former Tully’s Coffee across from West Seattle’s Alki Beach into a new food and drink destination shaped by Hagood.
Think Harry’s at the beach, Hagood says. “The spot will have a significantly larger kitchen to provide a bit more variety,” he writes. “Same killer brunches and seasonally driven fare that caters to locals and visitors alike.” Continue reading
Monica Dimas is ready to pass along the late night eats torch on E Olive Way.
The restaurateur behind some of Capitol Hill and beyond’s best nook and cranny-filing food and drink goodness announced over the weekend that her walk-up Tortas Condesa will close at the end of the month. Continue reading
Hideaki Taneda (Image: I Love Sushi)
Capitol Hill’s Broadway Alley has featured an eclectic mix of small restaurants and shops for decades. Its deepest reaches can be a challenging business environment but a well regarded Seattle sushi chef might just have the perfect solution for the “hole in the wall” opportunity.
Chef Hideaki Taneda is putting the final, likely exacting touches on his plans for Taneda, a new sushi bar in the back of the Broadway Alley that will adhere to traditional kaiseki style. Taneda has been the creator behind the bar at Lake Union’s I Love Sushi and is also part of the ownership behind Fremont Bowl. His career began at the age of 16 at the Miyazaki Culinary School in Japan, according to his bio, and, along with Shiro Kashiba, he was part of a Seattle Sushi “dream team” in 2011 to help raise money after the devastating Japanese earthquake. Continue reading
(Image: Metier)
As a global brand stumbles with as much focus on fashion as cycling, Capitol Hill’s Metier is setting its own pace with a new partner on E Union.
Metier’s Todd Herriott tells CHS the decision to link up with Seattle “sustainable” sandwich shop concern Homegrown was a natural combination and will help keep the food and drink in Metier’s “Coffee and Racing” concept.
“We learned a lot,” Herriott said of Metier’s three years in the food and drink business after it opened its new headquarters combining a cafe, bike gym, and training center on E Union in late 2015. One of the lessons, Herriott said, was to find a partner to put Metier’s space more fully to use with good food connected to the space’s cycling culture. Continue reading
Chef Belickis has been busying himself with pop-ups but now his attention shifts to Violet (Image: Violet)
By our calculations, you have about eight years to enjoy Violet, the new William Belickis project set to take over 12th Ave’s Chavez and hit the ground running with a champagne party Friday night.
The $45 a pop — ok, you get three glasses — soiree marks the takeover of the Durango-flavored Mexican restaurant by the Seattle veteran chef whose creativity stretched around eight years at Mistral in Belltown and another eight years at Mistral Kitchen in the Denny Triangle before its early 2018 closure.
Starting this weekend, 1734 12th Ave turns Violet. Continue reading
“It’s also about food justice,” Mariela Camacho says. “I want to give this to a community that doesn’t have a lot of food that is healthy and accessible to them.” (Image: Margo Vansynghel for CHS)
The sky is invariably dark, the atmosphere eerily quiet when Mariela Camacho gets to the commissary kitchen at 3 AM. No buzzing of mixers yet. No butter sizzling in pans, radio in the background, or cooks chopping onions, or bakers kneading dough. Usually, it’s just her and her diablitos (smoked paprika croissants), conchas (sweet bread rolls with crunchy toppings) and roles de canela (cinnamon rolls). One by one, Camacho loads them onto trays that go on top of the warm oven for proofing, the final rise before the final bake.
While the pastries rise, Camacho mixes the dough for sweet buns and bread, assembles pink cakes and alfajores, and chops up queso oaxaca for empanadas.
“And that’s just a regular day,” Camacho says. It’s 11 AM, and she’s worn out after a Sunday morning of baking. Her cheeks rosy from the work and oven heat, she’s loading up big boxes with bread, sweet buns and pastries to be whisked off to her wholesalers across the city: La Marzocco Cafe, Elm Coffee Roasters, Resistencia, Little Neon Taco, Addo, Bait Shop and Damn The Weather. Her wholesaler’s list has been growing quickly since she started her on-demand and pop-up bakery Comadre Panadería last spring.
Her pastry pop-ups, at Little Neon Taco, Dorothea Coffee or Broadcast Coffee, are increasingly popular as well. During her next pop-up, planned for Sunday, January 27th at Broadcast Coffee’s Jackson roasting house, Camacho will be selling cardamom orange conchas and a raspberry/beet niño envueltos.
