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La Dive — dark and cozy and comfortable and pink — now open on E Pike

Opatz, Custer, and Gurwitz

La Dive, a new natural wine bar and hangout from one of the creative forces behind Montana and Nacho Borracho, is ready for its new pink bar top to add a new layer to Pike/Pine nightlife.

“Sometimes I want to have a glass of wine,” Kate Opatz said at a friends and family debut for the new E Pike venue. “It’s still dark and cozy and comfortable but, yeah, a little more grown up.”

CHS reported this summer on the plans for Opatz to team up with first time owners Ani Custer and David Gurwitz on the transformation of the former Other Coast sandwich shop into a new bar with a minimalist approach to great wines — and some more outrageous elements like champagne bong “chambongs” and frozen wine slushies like friesling and frojolais.

The trio’s match-up is a good pairing. Custer grew her knowledge with the Garbage People Love Wine pop-ups, while Gurwitz built on his experience at Lark and Spinasse to build La Dive’s menu of bar toasts and dumplings. Opatz, meanwhile, has been part of creating successful neighborhood bars outside of the Pike/Pine core. Montana and Nacho are, affectionately, labeled dive bars.

 

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Welcome to La Deeeeeve, like the Saumur, France natural wine festival.

Even with her experience putting together new bars and Capitol Hill hangouts, Opatz says this week still gets her excited. “I love the opening process… everything comes together,” the food and drink veteran said.

“Those blue plates look amazing on a pink bar.”

La Dive joins a block including food and drink from longtime Thai joint Ayutthaya, la dive-y Honeyhole Sandwiches, and St. John’s. The block already home to businesses including Bang, Stitches, Babeland, and Standard Goods also got a new burst of life in one of its oldest spaces when Doghouse Leathers opened in its newly overhauled, auto row-era building earlier this year. Meanwhile, Life on Mars, the new bar from a Seattle music industry combo dedicated to vinyl records and a plant-based menu, opened across the street in June.

The project is one of two wine-focused food and drink additions that have been in the works around the Hill. The other, a “self-pour” concept slated for North Broadway, won’t debut until next year. Meanwhile, last year, an E Pike wine bar transformed itself into The Belmont, a couch-forward cocktail bar.

Below the La Dive wall’s new Jennifer Ament mural Wednesday night, Opatz said the plan is now to make a few “tweaks,” plan for longer daytime hours at some point, and start adding some simple wine events — but nothing fancy.

“We won’t ever have a sit-down wine dinner.”

Maybe something like a glass of wine while eating amazing crostini over the kitchen sink is more La Dive’s speed.

As for what’s next, she says the conversation has apparently already started. But Capitol Hill remains at the center of things.

“It’s my home,” Opatz said. “There’s been a lot of conversation about opening someplace else but until it’s saturated, it makes sense to me. I like to walk to work.”

La Dive is now open evenings at 721 E Pike, and 3 PM on the weekends. You can learn more at instagram.com/ladiveseattle.

 

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