Category Archives: Food & Drink

20+ Capitol Hill bars and restaurants to look forward to in 2016

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In 2016, a sibling to Magnolia's Mondello is coming to Broadway (Image: Mondello Ristorante Italiano)

In 2016, a sibling to Magnolia’s Mondello is coming to Broadway (Image: Mondello Ristorante Italiano)

2015 saw nearly 40 new bars and restaurants open around Capitol Hill. Last January, we had an inkling most of those were coming as large construction projects and significant investments were already underway. In 2016, the view is less certain but there are is still a lot of energy and planning in motion around the Hill’s food and drink economy. Below, we count down the projects we’re looking forward to covering in 2016. Let us know what we missed.

  1. Pizzeria 88: We’ll start our 2016 list with one you haven’t heard about. Magnolia restaurateur Karim Bonjrada is bringing wood-fired pizza to Broadway, taking over the space home to Corretto. Bonjrada isn’t concerned about joining a neighborhood already stuffed with restaurant choices. “Every place has its own energy,” Bonjrada says. “I’ll try to create my own energy there.” Expect a February opening.
  2. Iki: Pike/Pine Japanese hot dog king Shinsuke Nikaido is getting into the sushi business with a bar neighboring the Comet Tavern.
  3. Buddha’s Kitchen: After being acquired by Rancho Bravo owner Freddy Rivas, Ballet is being lined up for an overhaul and rebranding in 2016.
  4. Big Uncle: After years in the tight quarters of the Little Uncle counter, Wiley Frank and Poncharee Kounpungchart will open the sit-down Big Uncle in new construction on the same block of E Madison.
  5. Ethan Stowell E Pike: Construction schedules will dictate whether this new unannounced project from the prolific restaurateur in a preservation-friendly development at E Pike and Summit will open before the end of 2016.
  6. Harry’s Fine Foods: First time chef/owner Julian Huntley Hagood is behind the transformation of the old Bellevue and Mercer bodega into a new restaurant. Not much is known — yet — about the project but hopefully he got his signs back.
  7. Benson’s: Maybe not at the same scale as the Harry’s project, this grocery at Bellevue and Pike also has permits in place for adding a restaurant to its offerings.
  8. Sizzle Pie: Where once stood Po Dog and Auto Battery, Portland hipster pizza will now reign. Burnside-born Sizzle Pie will open soon on E Union.
  9. Dino’s Tomato Pie: Ballard pizza conqueror Brandon Pettit will open his “walkable pizza bar” featuring thick “square pie” style slices and offering takeout and delivery to the tightly packed neighborhood around Denny and E Olive way. Continue reading →

E Pike Caffe Vita’s upstairs — one of the Hill’s best coffee hangouts — now ’employees only’

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Upstairs at Cafe Vita

(Image: CHS)

(Image: CHS)

Late in 2015, Capitol Hill lost one of its best places for hanging out, having coffee, and getting some work done. We’re not talking about the Bauhaus closure.

Visitors to the E Pike Caffe Vita will now find a sign informing them that the upstairs area of the classic Capitol Hill cafe is “employees only.” A cafe worker not authorized to speak with the media said the space is now used for Caffe Vita’s growing office needs.

In 2015, Vita marked 20 years of business in Seattle… and beyond. We wrote here about the roots of the E Pike coffee hangout starting with Cafe Paradiso. In 2014, the old space got a good scrub and new floors.

For customers, the closure of the upstairs space and its catbird seat view of E Pike has been partly offset by moving more tables into a first floor space crowded with Seattle U and Seattle Central students, and laptop jockeys sucking down some caffeine and bandwidth. We’ve asked Vita for information about the change but don’t expect to find more to the story than a space crunch — and the loss of one of CHS’s favorite places to work.

UPDATE: A representative from Caffe Vita said she would get back to CHS — we asked for more information about the closure and if there was any chance the upstairs would be reopened to customers in the future.

39… Upper Bar Ferd’nand extends the 2015 Capitol Hill new opening wave

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IMG_8251

CHS’s yearly tallies are probably missing a name here or there, include some stretch-y borders, might include a double-count or three, and… well, you get the idea. (Source: CHS)

CHS’s yearly tallies (Source: CHS)

Such was 2015 in Capitol Hill food+drink that we’re adding an epilogue to our year in review post only a few hours after publishing. Upper Bar Ferd’nand, sibling to the Melrose Market original, is slated to debut Tuesday inside the bustling Chophouse Row development.

Focused on wine by the glass and European bar plates, Marc Papineau told CHS to expect a larger Ferd’nand in Chophouse with more food and a wood-fire oven. Meanwhile back in Melrose, Ferdinand co-owner Matt Dillon and Papineau readjusted their spaces in the market to make more space for Dillon’s Sitka and Spruce and downsize Lower Bar Ferd’nand.

Though it’s his second link-up with a Liz Dunn project, Dillon tells CHS it wasn’t really his intention to be part of a “new Melrose Market.”

“She had a space that felt good to both Marc and I — I wasn’t really looking to be part of a market-y concept,” Dillon said.

The goal was simply to find a new home for a larger Ferdinand with space to cook food and showcase ingredients from Dillon’s Vashon Island farm. The relatively small space with a roll-up door and — at the right time of day and year — lots of light was exactly what Dillon said he was looking for.

“It wasn’t very big — we didn’t really want to do something crazy and extensive,” Dillon said.

https://twitter.com/magick9999/status/681720669130772480

Like its low-Hill counterpart, Upper Ferdinand will also feature a bottle shop guided by Papineau.

Hours this week are limited and expect a few days off to start the New Year, according to the sign posted at Chophouse. Lower Ferdinand’s annual NYE bubbly party, in the meantime, is again part of the Hill’s 2016 party roster.

Check out barferdinandseattle.com for hours and more.

CHS Year in Review 2015 | Capitol Hill’s food and drink booms again

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Optimism Brewing was a big opening for Capitol Hill in 2015 -- and a small victory for small beer in a year when global brewing aspirations reigned (Image: CHS)

Optimism Brewing was a big opening for Capitol Hill in 2015 — and a small victory for small beer in a year when global brewing aspirations reigned (Image: CHS)

CHS’s yearly tallies are probably missing a name here or there, include some stretch-y borders, might include a double-count or three, and… well, you get the idea. (Source: CHS)

CHS’s yearly tallies are probably missing a name here or there, include some stretch-y borders, might include a double-count or three, and… well, you get the idea. (Source: CHS)


When it opened on 14th Ave in January, global modernist Nue — by our count — was the 100th new food and drink joint debut we’d covered going back through the Capitol Hill restaurant and bar boom to 2012. Using the same not-exactly-scientific methods and including a small handful of joints in the Central District, we’d venture a guess of 38 new bars, restaurants, and cafes opening around Capitol Hill in 2015. Only slightly offsetting that continued growth were a dozen or so closures — with most of those spaces either already returned to service or with new tenants lined up. And we didn’t even include rebirths and overhauls in the tally. In short, the Capitol Hill food+drink boom continued in 2015. But that’s what we said last year. With dozens of new ventures in motion, there is no other way to put it. Below are the stories, people, and places that made it happen.

YIR 2015
+ Our first look at the new Capitol Hill — the year in development
+ CHS Pics | This YEAR in Capitol Hill pictures
+ A Capitol Hill bookseller’s list: best books of 2015
Food+drink: 2014 / 2013 / 2012 / 2011 / 2010

Big beer: 2015 started with a double-edged indicator that it would be a big year for brew as global beer giant Anheuser-Busch announced its takeover of E Pike-born Elysian Brewing. Co-founder Dick Cantwell told CHS of his “mixed feelings” over the estimated $60 million deal. Three months after the takeover, he resigned. Meanwhile, the year ended with news of another big beer player settings its sights on Capitol Hill as Redhook announced plans for an E Pike small batch brewery and pub. The punchline? Redhook is owned by the Craft Beer Alliance, a company partly owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev.

Optimism

Optimism

Small big beer: With all that big beer money being thrown around, the biggest beer investment in the neighborhood was actually made by a Capitol Hill husband and wife team with a start-up mentality when it comes to brew. Optimism Brewing — a 16,000 square-foot brewery designed by Olson Kundig Architects — opened in November in an overhauled auto row-era showroom at Broadway in Union. Meanwhile, tiny Outer Planet opened on 12th Ave.

RIP Bauhaus: For many, Bauhaus died when it left its birthplace cafe at the corner of Melrose and Pine. The departure was completed for the rest of us in early December when the Bauhaus businesses imploded and its cafes shuttered across the city. The closure ended what many had been hoped would be a story of a neighborhood favorite overcoming the area’s relentless pace of development.

Continue reading →

Cheap/free/local/outside your apartment New Year’s 2016 parties on Capitol Hill

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New Year's Eve Post-Space Needle Fireworks - January 1st, 2010

Counting down the various parties and events going on at restaurants and bars across Capitol Hill is not a good chore for a completist. The good times are innumerable. Most venues are open, many will host patrons in their usual cover-free fashion. Plenty, however, make a bigger deal out of the big time party night. As is the CHS tradition, we’ve documented many of the parties below from free to wow, that’s expensive. It’s nowhere near the complete roster which some of you will probably appreciate as you hope you’ll be able to squeeze inside your favorite watering hole in time for the stroke of midnight. We’ve also mostly steered away from listings focused on special NYE dinners — for those interested in a fancy meal to end 2015, there are plenty to choose from. Hopefully you made your reservations for the best weeks ago. Note: Some of the prices listed are pre-sale so cost at door could vary. Let us know what we missed in comments or send mail to [email protected]. We’ll continue to add listings through the 31st.

UPDATE: Do NOT Drive! — Seattle hopes cheap rides in neighborhoods like Pike/Pine will help curb deadly DUIs

Happy 2016!

  • The freest of all! Yes, you can see the Space Needle fireworks from Capitol Hill — though weather may not cooperate with fog in the forecast.
  • $0 — Toddler New Year’s Party at Miller Community Center: 12/31/15 10 AM: “Bring your little ones to Miller to play and dance, Kids will enjoy dancing to music, playing with toys and snacking on healthy treats.”
  • $0 — Optimism: “New Year’s Eve *is* the optimists’ holiday! It is the one day of the year that we pledge to make the next year even better than the last. We resolve to improve ourselves and our world. We celebrate that attitude! At our party guests can share their resolutions in our photo booth — the more people you tell about your plans, the more likely you will be to succeed. We are staying open until 1a, but we will count UP (not down) to 2016 in all the US time zones so kids and the early-to-bed crowd still get to toast the new year. There is no cover, we serve only beer, it is 21+ after 9p, and Napkin Friends food truck will be here for dinner.” Continue reading →

Peloton — cafe, bar, bike shop — ready to ride on E Jefferson

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IMG_7144IMG_7054IMG_7018 IMG_7028There is still some fine-tuning required but it’s roadworthy. Peloton — the scrappy, gritty contender in a small pack of bike-related ventures starting around Capitol Hill and Central Seattle — will officially open for the New Year on January 2nd.

CHS stopped by the E Jefferson cafe, bike, and repair shop over the weekend as it hosted the after-ride party from the latest Back Alley Bike Repair time trial.

Peloton is a project from a group of riding friends who came together in Seattle’s bike polo scene and is part of a small trend of new ventures that combine bicycling with cafe culture. “Many cyclists kind of pick up the sport and it leads to a rabbit hole,” co-owner Dustin Riggs told CHS earlier this year. “There is a lot of culture around it.” “The coffee and the beer and the bikes. It’s just a lifestyle kind of thing,” he said. Business partners include mechanics Paul Dano and Aaron Grant, and bicycling cook Mckenzie Hart, formerly of the London Plane. Riggs said to expect the food and drink elements of Peloton to come into racing shape latest in the project as the first-time owners were up against their biggest challenges building out kitchen space in the former Ethiopian grocery.

The opening is part of a changing area around 12th Ave. Here’s how Dano addressed a question about “gentrification” in the CHS comments:

don’t think that we haven’t thought about the elephant in every conscious seattleite’s mind – what does gentrification look like and how much of it is acceptable in our neighborhoods? let me tell you what i’ve learned and what i know about our situation specifically: the space that we now occupy was previously an ethiopian restaurant/bar since the 90s. since we’ve moved in, i’ve been able to meet and chat with the previous tenant about her business and the reasons why she gave it up. i asked her personal questions because i was curious why someone would end their business in such a great location after so many years. she told me that she was done working that hard, her kids were grown, and her husband also owns his own business, so there was no more need for her to continue operating her own business. she essentially retired. that was a great relief to me because i did not want to feel like i was the reason that a 20 year old business had to close their doors. this is not the case.

“we are the gentrifiers.” this thought weighed heavy on my conscious and was a topic of conversation amongst my partners and our close friends/consultants. then we put things into context. we – dustin, mckenzie, aaron, and i – are all low income citizens in this city. we have all existed on ~20k a year incomes for the majority of our years here in seattle. this will not change – we cannot afford to give ourselves raises beyond what we are accustomed to making. so, if you consider a small group of people just getting by doing what they are passionate about and doing it outside of working for someone else – i don’t know what to tell you that would make you feel better about what we are doing. i guess you’re going to have to visit and make a final judgement for yourself, which i invite you to do even before we’re open for business. we will be working 9-9 every day until we open. we’d love to chat with you or anyone curious about what we’re doing face to face. we’re confident that after meeting us and hanging out in our space that you will feel good about giving us your business. and we will greatly appreciate it.

Peloton now shares a block with the Central District home of Nate’s Wings and Waffles while “whole cow” steakhouse Seven Beef opened nearby in October. The area is also home to island-flavored Taste of the Caribbean. In 2012, Capitol Hill Housing opened the six-story affordable apartment building The Jefferson on the corner at 12th. The area on the edge of the Squire Park neighborhood is also home to the Blue Nile and Zobel Ethiopian restaurants. Meanwhile, the Art Inn — a 15-room boutique hotel and bakery — is also planned for the neighborhood.

In biking parlance, the peloton is “the main field or group of cyclists in a race.” Middle of the pack? Sure. But also where you find your riding everyman and everywoman. You can compare and contrast the Peloton approach to bike culture with the massive, 12,500 square-foot gym, cafe, cycling shop, and company HQ from Metier now open on E Union. Meanwhile, a third bike shop + cafe project being planned for the area is back to starting line after running into difficulties with the Pike/Pine alley space it had targeted.

Peloton is at 1220 E Jefferson. You can learn more on the Peloton Facebook page.

Capitol Hill food+drink | Amandine Bakeshop, Empire Espresso team up for a challenge in Chophouse Row

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IMG_6741When you hear Sara Naftaly say “macaron,” you know the baker is creating something special. And you will try — and fail — to pronounce it with a similar accent.

But, as she talks about moving beyond macarons as “sugar bombs” by avoiding refined sugars and using only natural colorings, you will also know that the pastry chef is ready to move beyond the initial pitch behind her new Amandine Bakeshop — authentic macarons are good, but Naftaly has more interesting goals in mind.

“It’s kind of me as a baker, a very definite, personal expression,” Naftaly said.

“As much as beauty if important, flavor should come first. It makes it a challenge. It makes it more interesting.”

Amandine and its joined-at-the-hip sibling Empire Espresso opened this week in the slowly coming together Chophouse Row neighboring the centerpiece Chop Shop and just up the breezeway from locavore favorite Kurt Farm Shop and coming soon Bar Ferd’nand II.
IMG_6662 Continue reading →

You have cat to be kitten me: Neko Cat Cafe making Capitol Hill plans

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NekoJPEGWe know what you’re saying. You just can’t let yourself get that excited again. Capitol Hill cat cafe teases have come and gone. Wallingford? WTF? But open yourself, once more, to kitty love. Plus, this one has a business plan.

“Capitol Hill is so densely populated and so many people are living in apartments, that was my initial draw,” Caitlin Unsell tells CHS. “But I also just think the Hill is accepting of new, strange things.”

Inspired by the cat cafes of Japan, Unsell is making plans to open Neko Cat Cafe on Capitol Hill by spring 2016.

She just needs to raise $150,000 and find a special landlord accepting of the idea.

“It really just depends on the owner and what they’re OK with,” Unsell said. “A lot of owners aren’t stoked to have 10 animals in their space.”

Neko will be “a dual purpose cafe that helps facilitate the adoption of cats while simultaneously providing people with local food and drinks,” according to the press release. Continue reading →

Capitol Hill food+drink | Bauhaus isn’t going to return to Melrose and Pine (but it could have)

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(Image: CHS)

(Image: CHS)

We are truly sorry to let you know that the Capitol Hill Bauhaus had to close it’s doors. The plan was for this space to be our temporary home until the original space was to be ready for us to move back. Unfortunately, we are not able to move back to our original location.

“We talked to them. We asked for information and we waited.”

There are many ways to say goodbye. The way Bauhaus owner Joel Radin chose to do it with a wistful note full of what could have been left many with the sense that somehow the cafe that has been part of Capitol Hill since 1993 was being locked out of the dream-like scenario of returning to its original corner at Melrose and Pine.

But the developer of the Excelsior, the mixed-use, preservation-incented apartment project rising on the old Bauhaus block, tells CHS that Radin had every opportunity to make the plan a reality.

“We talked to them. We asked for information and we waited,” the Madison Development Group’s Tom Lee tells CHS.

While no deal had been signed, Lee said his company was awaiting the same kinds of information they ask for from any tenant to determine the health of a business and the fit for the project.

Lee said Bauhaus’s sudden implosion was a surprise for the development project, also.  Continue reading →

Here’s what it looks like inside the new Charlie’s

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Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your Twitter handle.

The new Charlie’s on Broadway opens Thursday with an all-day happy hour to celebrate its grand re-opening. Here’s what the old girl looks like all cleaned up and with a new coat of paint. Nearly everything has been rebuilt except the old table tops which have been refinished. The new ownership showed a little self control despite its sports bar roots — CHS only counted six TV screens in the new Charlie’s. Old timers will likely be shocked to find new lighting illuminating old features that used to only exist in partial darkness. You’ll even find power outlets at the bar for getting a little work done at the watering hole. You may still need to walk home to use the bathroom, though — Charlie’s old restrooms are pretty much as-is save the new sinks. The new prices aren’t too shocking — where else you gonna get prime rib for $14? You can get a Manny’s for $5 or a bottle of Budweiser for $3.50. You’ll live.

As for food and drink, the drinking options have increased while the unwieldy menu has been trimmed down. New co-owner Kelli Kreiter told CHS part of the reason for the changes is they couldn’t get some of the old recipes but previous owner Ken Bauer and management came to an agreement over continuing the Charlie’s name. Let us know if the Monte Cristo and the mozzarella sticks measure up.

Bauer helped open Charlie’s in 1976, taking it over in 2000 after the restaurant’s namesake owner passed away. As the end of the lease agreement approached five years ago, Bauer started looking to sell but found no buyers. CHS broke the bittersweet news of Bauer’s long-awaited retirement and Charlie’s closing in June. The Lodge Sports Grille deal to lease the space followed.

Charlie’s is open (again) at 217 Broadway E. Hours are 9 AM – 2 AM daily with happy hour from 3 to 6 PM and again after 10 PM. You can learn more at charliesonbroadway.com.

UPDATE: Further enabling you to remain a shut-in, here are a few images from the grand opening. Contains: food.