There is a new organic bakeshop and cafe in the heart of Pike/Pine. Shikorina Pastries celebrated its “grand re-opening” and is now settled in on E Pike.
“Cake is back!,” the latest social media post for Shikorina exclaims. “Chocolate chiffon w/ strawberry jam and vanilla buttercream,” the hand written sign promises.
CHS reported here last month on the plans from baker Hana Yohannes to move the Black, queer, and woman-owned “organic, sustainable Central District bakery” off of E Union and into the heart of E Pike in the space left empty by the exit of Portland vegan Jewish deli chain Ben and Esther’s.
The move is an opportunity to leave lease, financial, and personal challenges behind, Yohannes said. Continue reading →
Evan Maynard’s Gearhouse commute just got a lot better
Its Basecamp Cafe is established on Capitol Hill’s E Thomas just off Broadway and Gearhouse is now ready to outfit you with the equipment you need for a Pacific Northwest weekend. It is celebrating with a grand opening Thursday night.
Come join us to celebrate as we launch a summer of adventure with Gearhouse. We’ll be making coffee drinks, pouring beers, and serving apps from our new cafe, Basecamp. Gearhouse and Basecamp Cafe is your third place for finding outdoorsy friends.
CHS reported here on Capitol Hill resident Evan Maynard’s plans to bring his growing outdoor gear rental and community company to his home neighborhood as Gearhouse marks its first expansion from its South Lake Union birthplace.
Now a short walk from the former Blue Origin rocket engineer’s Capitol Hill apartment, Maynard and his team hope to help new members turn “a chore into a social experience” with the 2,800-square-foot Gearhouse’s mix of rental equipment, organized hikes and outings, education, and its overhaul of a shuttered cafe/retail experiment from AT&T into the new Basecamp Cafe and hangout with caffeine and beer and plenty of space to bring your laptop. Badger Coffee is ready to serve members — and anybody else who wants to hang out or get some work done in the new cafe.
Its opening joins another in the neighborhood outdoor gear space. Need some outdoor fashion for your trip? Windthrowis newly opened with outdoor apparel and accessories just off 15th Ave E.
At Gearhouse, membership provides access to the gear library which can be rented piecemeal but can also be curated based on what adventure you have planned. Maynard says Gearhouse is set up to provide personalized recommendations and gear packages — describe an adventure you’re about to take, and they’ll recommend a gear set to suit your needs.
He says the model helps members have a better time exploring the outdoors and the sturdier, higher quality gear keeps people from churning through disposable alternatives that end up in the trash. Continue reading →
Come May, if you are looking for well equipped outdoorsy types with a taste for Pacific Northwest adventure, Capitol Hill will have a hangout spot where hikers, bikers, kayakers, and climbers meet to gear up, team up, maybe do a little email and enjoy a coffee or a beer before heading out for the mountains, trails, and waters of the Puget Sound.
“You never want to have gear regret,” Gearhouse founder Evan Maynard tells CHS.
CHS reported here in March on the plans for Maynard to bring his growing outdoor gear rental and community company to his home neighborhood to E Thomas just off Broadway as Gearhouse marks its first expansion from its South Lake Union birthplace. There, Gearhouse has grown as “Seattle’s only social club for outdoorsy people” with a unique mix of hiking, camping, and adventure gear rental, events and education, and community.
“Gearhouse turns a chore into a social experience,” Maynard said this week as the new E Thomas location is geared up for a May 18th grand opening on Capitol Hill.
When it opens next month, Gearhouse Capitol Hill will mark the next step in Maynard and the small company’s efforts to make Gearhouse more than just a place to rent snowshoes or a tent. The subscription service’s expansion to Capitol Hill will be an even more social location with coffee and beer designed to make the new Gearhouse a neighborhood destination to also get some work done or meet with friends to plan your next hike.
If nothing else, the new cafe work space, gear rental space, and hangout will give Maynard a place to work near his Capitol Hill apartment. It could all just end up being that he is creating a really expensive “working from home” office space, Maynard quips.
But that seems unlikely. Gearhouse and the thousands of nearby Capitol Hill apartment dwellers and the thousands more people traveling through nearby Capitol Hill Station seem like a natural fit. Continue reading →
Already a home for hundreds of new Capitol Hill neighbors with its mix of affordable and market rate apartments, the mix of businesses in the new buildings above Capitol Hill Station will finally greet customers in 2022. There will be a new grocery store. There will be a Capitol Hill classic in the mix as the beloved Glo’smoves up the Hill to its new home on the edge of the station’s plaza. And, of course, there will a coffee shop.
Seasmith is planned to fill the development’s southern end with a corner spot facing the intersection of Broadway and E Barbara Bailey Way.
Like so many elements around the pandemic-delayed Capitol Hill Station development, it’s been a long wait for Seasmith. Continue reading →
A small, entirely eclectic cafe in one of the most space-challenged food and drink venues on 15th Ave E quietly closed to start 2015. It shut its doors a couple weeks back but we didn’t want Cafe ABoDegas and its funky capitalization to leave without saying goodbye.
Here’s a note posted by the cafe’s owners announcing the closure of the 15th Ave and downtown locations:
We’re so very sorry to let everyone know that Uriah and I have made the final decision to close our doors. We tried super hard to make it work and we unfortunately could not. We love every single one of our customers and want you to know you will be in our hearts forever. Good bye and good luck to all of you.
The 15th at Denny cafe in the street level commercial component of the Group Health Capitol Hill campus opened on Capitol Hill in 2013. Owner Jazmine Knaggs explained the name represented a triumvirate of ideas:
Abode — to evoke the feelings of home and shout out to the homeys in Sandpoint, Idaho where Knaggs and ABoDegas partner Uriah DuPerault hail from
Bodega — to evoke a sense of the corner market
Degas — to evoke the French impressionist
Abodegas, old timers, will recall, replaced Insomniax Cafe — another name dear to CHS’s obsessive heart. Meanwhile, the most exciting thing to ever happen in the cafe space remains this briefcase full of pot found there in 2011.
With the light rail connection to the University District right around the block and set to open by early 2016, Broadway and John’s cafe connection to places familiar to the University of Washington crowd will also get a boost before the end of the year.
The signs have gone up for Tea Republik in the 200 block of Broadway E just a block from the coming soon Capitol Hill Station.
Owner Jeffry Kurniawan confirmed the hoped-for December opening with CHS. He and business partner Anton Lim will be opening their second Tea Republik to join the original University Way NE location which opened in 2012 and got a full makeover in early 2013.
The cafe is known for its hangout vibe and “fusion” approach to tea. Continue reading →
Just a seven-minute downhill (eight-minute uphill?) walk from his neighborhood favorite Joe Bar, Wylie Bush has opened the new Barjot cafe on Bellevue Ave E.
The cafe replacing the shuttered Chico Madrid in the Belroy Apartments development made a quiet debut Tuesday.
Bush told CHS when we first reported on Barjot in May not to expect a major overhaul of the Chico space. “I have such a small budget and the space is so beautifully built out, I won’t make many changes,” he said at the time. “The meat slicer went away — the large juicer is in.”
Images: Barjot
Instead, you’ll find excellent coffee, a new robust offering of in-house baked goods and pastries from baker Maegan Rasmussen — and, eventually, fresh-squeezed juice. Bush said beer and wine will also be on offer and — possibly — liquor could be part of the longterm plan. The planned juice bar elements are planned to be added as the cafe’s hours expand later this summer. For the first couple of weeks, expect 6 AM to 2 PM hours of service.
Check out barjotseattle.com for more details as things settle in at 711 Bellevue Ave E.
Capitol Hill’s cafe lovers are doubly blessed this summer — Cafe Solstice Capitol Hill is also open for business just off Broadway.
Back to the Hill — Co-owners Joel Wood and Doug Sowers outside Cafe Solstice’s new location at 10th and Thomas.
Sowers and Wood working the Cafe Solstice cart in front of the current Jai Thai space, circa 1994 — from: After 12 years, Cafe Solstice returning to Broadway (Image: Picture of picture courtesy Joel Wood)
The story could be right out of the dreams of a Hill veteran jaded by change. More than a decade after their coffee cart left Broadway for an indoor space and the student-rich soil of the Ave, Joel Wood,Doug Sowers and Cafe Solstice are back on Capitol Hill with a vastly expanded operation just a block off Broadway.
Some 10 months after CHS first broke news of the plans for Solstice’s expansion back to the Hill, and right in time for Summer Solstice (can’t get one by us!), the doors of the new location will open this Saturday for an open house. Wood says there will be coffee for a dollar and some free pastries, and that booze and kitchen items will be available for happy hour prices all day starting at 7 am. CHS originally reported that the new Solstice was hoped to be open before the end of 2013. However, a marathon DPD process and the challenge of building out a brand new space in a brand new building drew out the timeline for getting things off the ground, Wood said.
The cafe will close again following Saturday’s party for a few finishing touches during the week. Owners Wood and Sowers hope to have the cafe open in full capacity for Pride weekend, with a push to be at full throttle by Thursday, June 26th.
As close as it is to Broadway’s bustle, Solstice sits on a surprisingly quiet and green corner at 10th and Thomas, in the only commercial space on the backside of The Lyric building.
The new Solstice will serve a variety of uses throughout the day — and night. “It’s not a straight cafe, it’s not a straight bar, it’s for everybody,” Wood said.
David and Danielle Hulton (Images: Alex Garland for CHS)
Built with the bones, heart and soul of the old bookstore that called the 15th Ave E house home for more than 30 years, Ada’s Technical Books will celebrate the official opening of its new Capitol Hill location on Saturday.
“It feels like the space is different and new — but at the same time, there’s a lot of really cool things that we reused,” owner Danielle Hulton tells CHS. The overhauled 1922-built structure was the location of Horizon Books for more than three decades before it closed its 15th Ave E shop in 2009.
Bits and pieces of the old place including repurposed doors and salvaged wood fixtures are mixed in with the rebuilt store and new cafe space. There will be one checkout line for the entire experience — cafe and books. A central open “spine” aisle runs through the center connecting it all, Hulton says.
There is a new organic bakeshop and cafe in the heart of Pike/Pine. Shikorina Pastries celebrated its “grand re-opening” and is now settled in on E Pike.
