14 sad goodbyes and 33 happy hellos in 2023 Capitol Hill food and drink

The French Guys started hanging out on Capitol Hill in 2023

We’ll start this year’s look back at the year that was in Capitol Hill food and drink with the goodbyes. You will note that many of the dozen most prominent Capitol Hill and the nearby restaurant, bar, and cafe closures are also part of 2023’s “hello” stories. When it comes to the economy of food and drink, we suppose you can look at every loss as an opportunity. CHS sees it more as a continuum as the buildings and street corners change and shift through the years with some spaces continuing their place as neighborhood gathering spaces for decades even as a rotating cast of characters puts them into motion, shutters, gives way, or settles in for long, fruitful stays. Remember what we had and enjoy what is new.

Thanks to Silver for this picture of the Rancho Bravo sign’s ignoble end

SAD GOODBYES

  1. Witness: Brothers and sisters, Broadway once had a Southern-flavored cocktail bar that served mint juleps, waffles, and fried chicken. It passed from this earth at the tender age of 10 in 2023.
  2. Rancho Bravo: Like many of our goodbye notes, Rancho Bravo’s adios story is also a hello. Owner Freddy Rivas told CHS the costs had added up and, after nearly 15 years of business, Rancho Bravo wasn’t penciling out anymore. Teto’s Cantina has stepped into the breach. Vaya con dios.
  3. HoneyHole: We’re making the call. HoneyHole — after inexperienced management under new owners and downright irresponsible management in its final days of business — died in 2023. Sometimes legends come back to life.
  4. Kimchi Bistro: Just as the Hill has been hit by a wave of new Korean flavors, this 21-year-old veteran of the neighborhood’s food and drink scene shuttered. Its replacement? A Korean hamburger joint, believe it or not. Continue reading

CHS Year in Review 2023 | Capitol Hill’s most important stories

2023 should have been a year of recovery. Squeezed between the city and the country regaining their footing out of the pandemic and the coming dumpster fire of the 2024 presidential election, 2023 probably should have given us more time to rest. But life in the big city never really slows down. The year brought massive public safety issues and an important political race of our own to the neighborhoods around Capitol Hill and the Central District. There were also tragic losses. It wasn’t all grey. There were also big new starts and a few nostalgic goodbyes. Here are CHS’s most important stories of 2023.


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  • PRIDE PLACE OPENS: Pride Place, a 118-unit, affordable, LGBTQIA+ focused senior housing and services development, opened on Broadway… neighboring Neighbours.
  • NEW GLO’S: After three decades on E Olive Way, Glo’s arrived in its new home above Capitol Hill Station — a space three and a half times bigger and much improved over the original. Even in the big expansion and fancy new digs, owners Julie Reisman and Steve Frias continue to proudly work the line. Meanwhile, the diner became a symbol of Capitol Hill’s changing labor environment as its workers agreed in a neck and neck vote to reverse efforts to organize as a union.
  • HOLLINGSWORTH WINS AS SAWANT STEPS ASIDE: She began the year with a MLK Day announcement. Joy Hollingsworth — a Black, queer, Central District cannabis entrepreneur and community leader — was running for the District 3 seat on the Seattle City Council. Weeks later, incumbent Kshama Sawant announced she would not seek reelection ending her decade-long run at City Hall. In 2013, the Seattle Central and Seattle University economics professor included a promise of a fight for a $15 minimum wage in announcing she would take on incumbent Richard Conlin for his seat on the Seattle City Council. A decade later, she is leaving office after that successful upset and a string of political victories that included overcoming an attempted recall in 2021. The $15 now victory came first in 2014 — though it would take years for the city’s required wage to reach that level. A push for rent control followed but fell by the wayside in 2020 when the city’s shifting political tides put the effort to tax large employers on the frontburner. The pandemic sealed the deal. By that summer, Seattle had a new payroll tax and Sawant, another victory like $15 an hour — a far left movement translated into a version palatable at Seattle City Hall. Her run of success on those largest initiatives came to an end at City Hall this year as she was preparing to step down from office. In July, Sawant’s final bid for rent control in Seattle fell short at the council. She will now focus on Workers Strike Back, her nascent campaign to form a new leftist national party. Hollingsworth, meanwhile, flipped Seattle’s most progressive district and cruised to victory with a moderate platform focused on public safety, equity, and economic opportunity shaped by her life and family history in the Central District. Continue reading

CHS Year in Review 2022 | The Year’s Most-Read Stories: park sweeps, guerilla crosswalks, Love is Blind, M2M, ice storms, and Tiffany Smiley’s B.S.

 

In the end, we remember only what we pay attention to. Here is a look back at 2022 around Capitol Hill, the Central District, and nearby neighborhoods through the prism of CHS’s most-read stories for each month of the year. Thanks for reading!

JANUARY

  1. January 25th — It’s like combining Seattle Smoke Season with Seattle’s Coldest Day in 23 Years — Air stagnation advisory issued: 2022 started with apocalyptic winter skies as Seattle and the region were socked in with cold, smoggy fog.
  2. January 18th — With 49 buildings at highest risk across Capitol Hill and Central District, Seattle pushes for 2022 progress on mandatory earthquake retrofits: Seattle’s 40-year quest to shore up unreinforced masonry buildings continued.
  3. January 23rd — ‘We have decided to end our tenure on our terms’ — Cafe Pettirosso to close after 27 years on Capitol Hill: CHS broke the news that owners Miki and Yuki Sodos were shutting down the much-loved hangout.

FEBRUARY Continue reading

CHS Year in Review 2022 | The Year in Food+Drink: 36 sad goodbyes and milestones

(Image: Joe Bar)

The pandemic continued to reshape Capitol Hill’s food and drink economy in 2022. You might have forgotten, but the year began with venues still facing uncertainty over issues like vaccination card requirements. But the environment accelerated in 2022 after the previous two years of restriction and caution. That new motion brought a wave of changes and closures including the shuttering of some Capitol Hill favorites. It brought new battles over labor and workers rights. And it brought a surprising number of new openings with new owners, new chefs, and new ideas ready to add to the culture and community around going out to eat or having a drink on Capitol Hill.

SAD GOODBYES AND MILESTONES.    |.    NEW OPENINGS

Yuki Sodos, Robin Wright, and Miki Sodos, of Cafe Pettirosso

SAD GOODBYES

CHS Year in Review 2022 | Seattle Library’s ‘most checked-out’ books of the year

Hey, CHS readers, the Seattle Public Library has provided its rankings of the most-borrowed books in its system in 2022 in both physical and e-book format along with lists for nonfiction and also audiobooks. One of the most-read involves the haunting of an independent bookstore, naturally, while the nonfiction ranks will make you want to give Seattleites a hug on their quest to find love and eat better. CHS was happy to see Seattle Walk Report’s Secret Seattle: An Illustrated Guide to the City’s Offbeat and Overlooked History make the lists. We talked with Susanna Ryan about her work way back in 2018. Happy reading.

WHAT SEATTLE READ IN 2022: THE SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY’S MOST CHECKED-OUT BOOKS OF THE YEAR

Curious about which books Seattle’s insatiable readers turned to in 2022? Need a little inspiration for that 2023 book list you’re already making? The Seattle Public Library has you covered.

The most popular fiction book checked out from The Seattle Public Library from January through November 2022 was “The Sentence,” by Louise Erdrich. It’s a novel about a Minneapolis bookstore haunting and much more set in 2020, a “year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.” The most checked out e-novel was “The House of Broken Angels” by renowned Mexican-American author Luis Alberto Urrea, the selection for the Library’s 2022 Seattle Reads program. Seattle’s community of e-audiobook listeners checked out “Braiding Sweetgrass,” read by author Robin Wall Kimmerer, more than any other e-audiobook.

Several books by Northwest authors also ranked high in popularity in 2022, including “Secret Seattle,” by Library staff member Susanna Ryan; “Red Paint,” by Coast Salish author Sasha LaPointe; The Final Case, by David Guterson; and “Grains for every Season,” by Oregon chef Joshua McFadden (with Martha Holmberg).

Here are the other most popular fiction and nonfiction books, e-books and e-audiobooks among Library patrons last year. Please note that these lists were compiled from anonymous checkout data collected from January 1 through November 30, 2022.

THE LIBRARY’S 10 MOST POPULAR ADULT FICTION PHYSICAL BOOKS

  1. The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich
  2. The Maid, by Nita Prose
  3. Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel
  4. The Final Case, by David Guterson
  5. The Swimmers, by Julie Otsuka
  6. Book Lovers, by Emily Henry
  7. One Italian Summer, by Rebecca Serle
  8. This Time Tomorrow, by Emma Straub
  9. Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt
  10. The Candy House, by Jennifer Egan Continue reading

CHS Year in Review 2022 | The Year in Food+Drink: 28 new openings

Maripili’s Grayson Pilar Corrales

The pandemic continued to reshape Capitol Hill’s food and drink economy in 2022. You might have forgotten, but the year began with venues still facing uncertainty over issues like vaccination card requirements. But the environment accelerated in 2022 after the previous two years of restriction and caution. That new motion brought a wave of changes and closures including the shuttering of some Capitol Hill favorites. It brought new battles over labor and workers rights. And it brought a surprising number of new openings with new owners, new chefs, and new ideas ready to add to the culture and community around going out to eat or having a drink on Capitol Hill.

SAD GOODBYES AND MILESTONES.    |.    NEW OPENINGS

Time Warp

NEW OPENINGS
The 2022 generation of Capitol Hill and Central District food and drink might be best remembered for its breadth with a range of new ventures from chef-driven concepts that would have had a place in the pre-pandemic restaurant scene to new pared-down and efficient concepts that reflect some of the new realities of staffing and labor. Along the way, some great new neighborhood joints were created.

  • MariPili: Maybe the year’s most significant opening as chef and first time owner Grayson Pilar Corrales was one of the few in Seattle to take on opening restaurant with 2015-level ambitions in the 2022 version of the city. The opening also put the space of longtime favorite Cafe Presse back into motion.
  • Time Warp: Easily the year’s most anticipated opening — Capitol Hill’s nightlife has been waiting for this 10th Ave video game bar dream to become reality since CHS first reported on it two years ago.
  • Gemini Room: The 2,000 square foot space, formerly Pettirosso Cafe, is backed by Joey Burgess and Murf Hall of Burgess/Hall. Gemini Room is the debut project of Tanner Mclaughlin, Jackie Proctor, and Ioana Andrei who are teaming up with the company behind a growing family of Pike/Pine businesses that ranges from Queer/Bar to Elliott Bay Book Company.
  • Anchorhead Coffee: The small Seattle chain expanded onto 12th Ave in the former Stumptown roastery space and now neighbors MariPili
  • Oxbow: Sea Wolf Bakery expanded to Montlake with Oxbow providing bagels and baked goods along 24th Ave E
  • Chicken Factory: Korean fried chicken counter joint in the former Marination space above broadway and Pike Continue reading

CHS Year in Review 2022 | The Year in Development — from 400 units to 49

Part of CHS’s core mission is helping our readers with change. Here is a look back at 2022 through the prism of change to come as new waves of development have returned to Capitol Hill after a pandemic lull. Below, you will find the planned mixed-use development and housing projects CHS covered around the Hill through the past year. We’ve organized them from largest to smallest by unit count. There are also new forces at play. New affordable development should hopefully move forward more quickly with new design review exemptions for low income housing. Meanwhile, there is a robust pool of public funding available to shift new projects planned as market-rate apartments into the city’s growing pool of affordable housing. There is also work to undo some of the injustice and inequity of the past with efforts like the William Grose Center for Cultural Innovation and Enterprise, Africatown’s center for “economic empowerment and community-driven development,” that opened in the Central District this year. The stories of these new developments — and the stories of the people who will call the new buildings home — will come in 2023 and beyond as the waves of change continue reshaping the neighborhood.

  • 400 units — 1410 E John: “The new project will replace the existing 44,000-square-foot Safeway and its adjacent surface parking lot. The Safeway was built in 1998 and as of 2021, had an appraised value of $39.48 million, according to county tax records. In its place, developer Greystar and architect Weber Thompson propose a new, 50,000-square-foot Safeway, about market rate 400 apartment units, some new, smaller retail locations and an underground parking lot for about 350 cars, according to the design review proposal…” Continue reading

39+ new openings and 11 sad goodbyes in Capitol Hill food and drink in 2021

Caesar Martinez’s Antojitos Jalisco was just one of the small but still shiny glimmers of hope in 2021 food and drink on Capitol Hill

2020 happened — we know because CHS reported on that year in the neighborhood’s stories of restaurants, bars, and cafes here. Looking back and considering the challenges of that year, a surprisingly robust class of new venues joined the Hill two years ago even as the pandemic first took shape. 2021’s stories are equally full of hope. There are also more crystal clear sad goodbyes. The return to something closer to normalcy brought with it a solidification in the neighborhood’s food and drink economy that penciled out as the end for some much-loved veterans of the neighborhoods dining scene. But when you click through and read the stories, you’ll find that most of those sad goodbyes include the prologue for new projects — and new hopes — in 2022. First, here’s a look back at the year in Capitol Hill food and drink.

THE PANDEMIC
Don’t forget — we finally got the vaccines in 2021 and service workers at Capitol Hill’s restaurants and bars were near the front of the line. By the end of 2021, Capitol Hill food and drink culture had incorporated a new world of pandemic-era service. It’s no big deal, now, to show your vaccination card or test results at the door. Thanks to the early adopters like CC’s for showing the way. Tents and patio tables became ubiquitous and could be a permanent new part of the neighborhood’s street scene. And, yes, this actually happened on E Pike but given how many of the installations there are, that event proved to be a rarity. To-go cocktails and beer are also apparently here to stay. More financial relief arrived but, as has been typical through the pandemic, it couldn’t help everyone. 2021 was not a time to sit still. Even Capitol Hill restaurant veterans had to be prepared to change plans. An example? Nathan Lockwood abandoned Carrello’s signature carts of stuzzichini, antipasti, and salumi due to COVID-19 restrictions but continued to serve its other signature feature — hearty Italian fare. Neighborhood favorite Rondo showed how it was done early in the year when in-person service was still restricted. Eventually, we could sit down again and other neighborhood favorites returned. Meanwhile, some restaurants explored new short-term revenue opportunities to stay afloat while other venues found support and financial help from their communities. How we work and how we organize also changed through the year with growing union activity emerging in surprising places like a Broadway Starbucks. Then the year ended with yet another challenge: Omicron’s surge forced even more plans to be changed. 2021 ended and 2022 begins with some of the greatest staffing and safety challenges of the pandemic.

NEW HOPE

  • (Image: CHS)

    After years of growth, the first new Capitol Hill restaurant in a new Capitol Hill space to open in 2021 didn’t debut until September when Kobuta and Ookami Katsu and Sake House opened in new construction on 15th Ave.

  • Seasonal Pacific Northwest cafe Finch and Pine from chef Sara Moran arrived on Bellevue Ave, keeping the spirit of Sitka and Spruce — plus, “_____ and _____” restaurants — alive on Capitol Hill.
  • Cafe Racer created a new home, new music venue, and new bar in an old space on 11th Ave.
  • Counter favorite Carmelo’s Tacos expanded with a new 12th Ave location — and churros. Continue reading

CHS Year in Review 2021 | Capitol Hill’s most important stories

 

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Heading into 2021, there was more at stake in the hopes for the new year than normal. We were coming out of the bleakness of 2020 and the arrival of COVID-19. As we begin our path into 2022, it turns out hope is even more important. 2021 showed us that none of this is going to be easy. Meanwhile, smaller 2021 stories also unfurled across Capitol Hill. After a 2020 with the neighborhood pulled into the global media eye amid the unrest and protests, many of the neighborhood stories from around Capitol Hill and the Central District over the past year feel even teenier and tinier. CHS is ok with that. There are plenty of big lessons to be learned, sad passings to be mourned, and new beginnings to be celebrated in this small part of the big planet.

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Here’s a look back at 2021 on CHS:

CHS Year in Review 2020 | The year in pictures

Happy New Year. As we do every year, CHS has assembled photographs that tell the story of the year behind us as we look ahead to the year to come. In 2020, CHS was helped like never before by our readers and community photographers as the incredible stories of the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests converged on Capitol Hill. Thanks so much for the help and thanks, again, to CHS regular contributor Alex Garland. Drop Alex a line if you’d like to learn more about supporting his work or purchasing photographs.

Please also consider becoming a “pay what you can” CHS subscriber to help us pay reporters and photographers for their amazing work covering the neighborhood.

Meanwhile, explore CHS’s 2020 in photos, below. Each image links to its CHS post so take a minute to explore the stories from the year. We thank you for being part of CHS and look forward to bringing you more images and stories from around Capitol Hill in 2021.

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