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Otherworld Wine Bar brings new life to revival of 114-year-old Pike/Pine building

After two years of permitting and construction, Otherworld Wine Bar is opening its doors on Capitol Hill and helping to bring new life to this corner of upper Pike/Pine.

With a successful soft opening over the weekend behind them, owners Matt Lucas and Ben Chaykin are more than ready to start popping corks for Capitol Hill customers. Tired of the process, but happy to be open, Lucas tells CHS, “it’s been a really good reception.”

This is the first business for the partners Lucas and Chaykin, but thanks to their Juice Club pop-up events, they already have a following.

“We were able to kind of like, take what we did at those clubs and create somewhat of a small community through those events,” Lucas said. “And now we’re lucky to open up an entire space.”

Both call Capitol Hill home, so they were happy to accidentally stumble across the opportunity. CHS reported here way back in December of 2021 on the early plans for Otherworld as part of an overhaul and revival of an old commercial building where 14th Ave meets Pike and Madison. The new Otherworld space is part of an afterlife, indeed, for the 114-year-old building home to plenty of neighborhood ghosts. The project from Coldwell Banker Bain Capitol Hill turned the one-time auto row-era grocery into new offices for the real estate firm and a space for the wine bar.

Chaykin and Lucas

Situated on the southern edge of 14th Ave’s First African Methodist Episcopal Church campus and massive parking lot, the two-story building had been empty since arts venue nomad Love City Love pulled out of the space in 2019. Previously, the building was home to the prosthetics sales company Artificial Limb Co. and the Electric Tea Garden, a Capitol Hill hangout and nightlife venue that straddled the line between nightclub and underground club. Long ago around 1916, Jacob A. Stavik Grocery called it home.

Now, with pandemic-delayed permits and construction wrapped up, the real estate office is humming along and Otherworld is open for business. Originally on our list of food and drink projects to look forward to in 2022, Otherworld is part of a small burst of food and drink debuts coming this month around the Hill.

Loving the proximity to the “craziness down the hill,” Chaykin is also happy to be in a space with ties to old Capitol Hill that kept its charm after renovation, as opposed to a “brand new apartment building retail atmosphere. It was a perfect spot for us.”

Currently serving crunchy bar snacks to accompany the wine, the pair are still working out their food program and after speaking with other business owners, realize it’s a compromise between what customers want and owner ambitions as to what the space ends up being. Regardless of where the food ends up, the wine is the focus.

Natural wines in Seattle have grown in popularity thanks in part to the events hosted by the business duo. Small producers are the name of the game at Otherworld, with 95% of their wines having “nothing added and nothing taken away.” Hand picking their wine is a requirement, and they challenge their distributors to do the same.

“We call out wine producers by name that we see in Seattle, so hopefully we can push the needle a little bit and to see more of these wines in restaurants and other places,” Chaykin said. “But we’re lucky to be what we think is the first place to have a couple of bottles that are on our shelves.”

Fully opening on Tuesday, April 18th, Otherworld will hopefully stand out amongst Capitol Hill wine spots with their “unique” perspectives on wine.

“We all like different producers around here,” Chaykin said. “There’s certain ones that we’ll focus on that other places might not.”

Otherworld is located at 1406 E Pike. Learn more at otherworld.wine.

 

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