‘YOU DESERVE A SWEET LITTLE TREAT’ — Shikorina Pastries now open on E Pike

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

Cops investigate ‘mosh pit’ at Capitol Hill Starbucks Roastery

A still from a video purportedly showing the roastery mosh pit

Seattle Police were called to a reported mosh pit inside the Starbucks Roastery on Melrose at the base of Capitol Hill Sunday afternoon.

According to East Precinct radio reports, police were called to the massive Melrose at Pike coffee venue just after 3 PM to a report of some type of band playing music and a small group of dancers forming a mosh pit inside the popular tourist stop.

By the time police arrived, the disturbance had cleared and there were no signs of a band or any dancers.

The incident does not appear to be related to the Emerald City Comic Con that was underway nearby at the convention center.

On Reddit’s r/Seattle group, the folk punk band Sister Wife Sex Strike took credit for the stunt saying they planned the show as a pop-up for fans in celebration of the group’s new EP.

“We had a goal of getting through all 4 songs but had to leave after 2 because cops were called. videos coming soon :),” the group’s account posted, adding a “fuck starbucks” for good measure.

There were no arrests and no injuries reported.

 

BECOME A CHS SUBSCRIBER
Subscribe to CHS to help us pay writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. Become a subscriber at $1/$5/$10 a month.

 

 

 

Bonito Café y Mercadito bringing community, culture, and coffee to Capitol Hill

(Image: Bonito Cafe y Mercadito)

By Juan Jocom

An amalgamation of a classic coffee shop with a shopping experience you’d typically find in Latino mercados, Bonito Café y Mercadito, is preparing to open on E Olive Way, neighboring Capitol Hill’s Pie Bar and Donna’s.

It will soon serve locally Latino-grown sourced coffee and will be hosting mercado events featuring Latino vendors.

From photographers to monthly hosts of Aqui Mercado in Pioneer Square, couple Daniel and Ismael Calderon, are soon to open their dream business that was inspired last year after they hosted their first mercado event. Over the past months hosting their mercado, they were able to build a community of hundreds of supporters and fans.

It was never the plan to open a cafe-market hybrid store. However, after positive feedback from the Latino and queer community from their mercado, the couple decided to pursue opening the business that captures the vibrancy of their monthly event into a daily experience. Continue reading

Black Coffee Northwest, already a presence in the neighborhood, making plans for opening at 23rd and Jackson

A rendering of the new signage at Black Coffee Northwest

Things are rounding into form and improvements like a pour of new concrete are taking shape as Black Coffee Northwest prepares to put this important Central District corner back into full motion.

Black Coffee Northwest’s Central District location at 23rd and Jackson is planned to open at the end of February, but ongoing construction may push the opening towards early March. A primary challenge of getting this location up-and-running has been building a small business out-of-pocket. Darnesha Weary said the community enthusiasm for the new cafe is strong but meeting capital needs has been a slow climb.

“We’re feeling that. We’re feeling all of the data on how Black businesses get less access to capital,” Weary said. “The city has been really helpful. The Office of Economic Development, they have funded the majority of our project, which is really great.” Continue reading

Now lighting up mornings on Capitol Hill: Fuel’s Broadway counter and new starts for Bauhaus and Overcast

What a difference a year makes. Capitol Hill’s coffee and cafe scene has gone from shrinkage to growth with the start of 2024. Fuel is rocking its new place in the Broadway streetscape, the reborn Bauhaus is born again, and Overcast has added its pulls to the Pike/Pine mix with a new space on 12th Ave.

At the top, the famed Vivace walk-up counter has new life as the books and coffee business family behind Fuel took over the caffeine bar with an end of 2023 neon-lit debut on Broadway.

CHS reported here on Fuel’s overhaul of the space below the Casa Del Ray apartments to be its fourth Seattle location and second on Capitol Hill as Vivace decided to end its decades of service at the counter over challenges around staffing and proximity to its Broadway Brix location. Continue reading

A Capitol Hill Station cafe years in the making, Seasmith really will arrive in 2024

Seasmith will have a lot in common with its Beacon Ave sibling Fable (Image: Fable)

Capitol Hill Station’s crowds of light rail passengers are back to pre-pandemic levels — and then some. The mix of apartments and new residents above the stations has created a busy new Broadway neighborhood. Now the hopes of new businesses above the nearly eight-year-old Seattle subway stop are also returning to pre-pandemic levels.

“I don’t think I could have imagined that a project could take us that long but back then,” Mathew Wendland, owner of Seasmith said. “But I also couldn’t have imagined any of the things we were all going to go through within COVID.”

Seasmith is the happily anticipated, long awaited coffee shop and casual hangout from the Burien Press family of businesses. It will have been in the works to join Capitol Hill Station’s new development at the corner of Broadway and E. Barbara Bailey Way for five years when it finally opens in 2024 joining the expanded Glo’s Diner (May 2023), and H Mart’s M2M grocery market (April 2022) as the development’s commercial tenants finally reach critical mass.

Seasmith will be “all day cafe, really looking at how do we create something that is activating every part of the day — coffee, fresh food in morning, full kitchen, lunch, dinner, beer, natural wine,” Wendland said about the project when we first spoke to him about it in 2021.

When it finally opens next year, Seasmith’s story will be one of pandemic challenges, transit oriented development bureaucracy, and creative perseverance. Continue reading

Fuel Coffee lands on Broadway with new life for the old Vivace sidewalk bar

Hulton (Image: Fuel Coffee)

 

BECOME A CHS SUBSCRIBER
Subscribe to CHS to help us pay writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. Become a subscriber at $1/$5/$10 a month.

 

 

 
The truth is out there. There is new life coming to the former Vivace sidewalk coffee bar on Broadway.

Fuel Coffee is busy overhauling the space below the Casa Del Ray apartments to be its fourth Seattle location and second on Capitol Hill as it prepares to continue “the legacy of great coffee and quick service” of the famed walk-up counter.

“As you all know, Vivace made this location a community pillar, and we all mourned its closing,” the Fuel announcement reads.

Don’t worry. The old Vivace shrine featuring Caffeina, Goddess of the Waking Day should still be in place. Continue reading

The Broadway X-Files? ‘I want to believe’ UFOs show up at shuttered Capitol Hill coffee walk-up

Thanks to Todd Mathews for these pictures. Check out his Capitol Hill Rewind series of articles on the neighborhood’s rich record-shop history.

The Cigarette Smoking Man hasn’t shown up — yet — but there is some extranormal activity underway at the location of the old Vivace sidewalk coffee bar on Broadway.

It could be marketing.

Thanks to readers for the tips and pictures of the scene. We’re looking into it.

CHS reported here this spring as the Vivace family bid goodbye to the popular counter space after decades of service as it faced challenges around staffing and its proximity to the still-bustling Broadway Vivace cafe.

For now, keep your eyes on 321 Broadway E.

 

BECOME A CHS SUBSCRIBER
Subscribe to CHS to help us pay writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. Become a subscriber at $1/$5/$10 a month.

 

 

 

After 16 years on Capitol Hill, Kaladi Brothers Coffee is headed back to Alaska

(Image: Kaladi Brothers)

Thanks to a CHS reader for the picture

There is finally a date for the end of one of the last of the Capitol Hill coffee houses as E Pike’s Kaladi Brothers is preparing customers for the change.

The only lower-48 location of the Alaska coffee chain will close at the end of July. A sign has gone up at the cafe with the planned final day of service listed as July 27th 29th along with contact information for customers who might want to send a last tip to their favorite baristas.

There is no plan to move or reopen, manager Erika “EZ” Zumwalt tells CHS.

The planned closure comes after years of limbo for the block since CHS first broke the news in August of 2020 on a planned redevelopment of the auto row-era buildings along this stretch of E Pike. Zumwalt said one timeline originally had the cafe moving out last summer but Kaladi decided to take the offer of another year in the space from developer Hunters Capital. Continue reading

Starbucks illegally meddled with worker testimony in fight over Capitol Hill cafe unionization, labor board rules — UPDATE: Strike!

Starbucks has lost another round in its ongoing legal fight against unionization at its stores across the country and here on Capitol Hill.

In the latest in a string of rulings against the coffee giant, the National Labor Relations Board ruled Starbucks illegally hampered a worker at its Broadway and Denny store from testifying at a board hearing. Continue reading