#2000 #S1100 - Speckled and Drake, Seattle - 1/6/2013

Update: Speckled and Drake closed in 2022

"Do you have a cocktail menu?" I asked the bartender in this new place, in the space of the old Living Room, which used to serve some nice ones. The bartender/owner answered that he was working on one, explored my preferences, and served a nice variation on an Old Pal / Negroni sort of thing (the particulars I forget). From his answer I could tell he'd heard that question several times now, despite setting out to found a sort of instant dive, focused on a simple menu of blue collar beers and shots. I was the only one in the place at the time, and J.D. the owner was still working out some of details of the place. A bit later a friend joined me, and asked him if he had a cocktail menu.

J.D. (Justin Martinsen) grew up in the Seattle area (Roosevelt HS), then moved to Brooklyn and opened a bar called "duckduck" in Williamsburg in 1996. "Speckled" and "drake" are references to the female and male Mallard, and J.D. told The Stranger that the duck them came from his old haircut, which "flipped up in the back and looked like a duck's ass." The menu he does have is a list of boilermakers, various shots paired with blue collar beers, such as the "Fisherman's Friend" (Olympia and well whiskey) and the "Horny Woodsman" (Rainier and Woodford).

The woodwork, vintage bar, the various reclaimed signage and other items, and free Cheetohs reinforce the divey, garage-y feel of the place, and perhaps it will eventually carve out a Capitol Hill crowd that prefers the Oly and PBR. But until the word gets out, a new bar on Olive Way is going to come with certain expectations. As we sat there on a lazy Sunday evening, a few local gals popped in to check out the new place, taking in the new decor and the chalkboard of boilermaker combinations, and asked, "Do you have a cocktail menu?"

1355 E Olive Way, Seattle, WA 98122                            
Est. Dec 2012 - Building constructed: 1925
Previous bars in this location: The Living Room

Ranked articles: capitolhillseattle - thestranger - seattlemet - thrillist - yelp