#1013 - Jake's Famous Crawfish, Portland - 3/12/2010

Jake's Famous Crawfish, Portland, OR

Step into Jake's and it seems instantly recognizable to anyone who has been in one of the 85 or so McCormick & Schmick's around the country.  That means pretty good food (usually an emphasis on seafood), excellent happy hour deals, pretty good service, and a friendly, decent bar that looks -- and often is -- 100 years old.

But McCormick & Schmick purchased the business only in 1972, after the business had been running in this location since 1911. Many people date Jake's as the second oldest restaurant in Portland, after Huber's. Indeed, some date the business back to 1892, through a string of preceding businesses in other locations. The Mueller and Meier saloon was established in 1892 at 18th and Washington, and moved into the just constructed Whitney and Gray Building in 1911. Mueller and Meier sold the business to Jacob "Jake" Freiman and a partner during prohibition, with Jake passing away just as prohibition was ending. It is not clear if it took the name Jake's immediately with the new ownership in 1920, but Freiman is said to have been a popular local character who brought with him crawfish expertise and an enthusiastic following (wikipedia).

Jake's Famous Crawfish, Portland, OR

 The exterior of Jake's features a neon sign installed in 1927, at the dawn of the age of neon, and now the oldest remaining in Portland. Walking in under this sign one may be seated in one of the elegant, white tablecloth settings in multiple rooms to the right, or take a left into the bar. The bar is a hodgepodge of antiques and memorabilia, with a 37' mahogany Brunswick front bar and before that a tiled trough and drain dating back to the Mueller and Meier era. The trough once had running water for the convenience of tobacco chewing customers. The walls feature replicas of classic paintings, old photos, and sports memorabilia, around a backbar comprising various antique cabinets and counters, some reflecting the days as a soda fountain during prohibition.

 You are not likely to find cutting edge cuisine or creative craft cocktails at Jake's, but you will find a stolid, quality meal in an elegant, old school setting.

Jake's Famous Crawfish, Portland, OR

401 SW 12th Ave., Portland, OR 97205 - (503) 226-1419
Est. 1920? as "Jake's"?  1933? as a bar?
mccormickandschmicks.com - nps.gov - barfly - yelp - urbanspoon

#1012 - The Gilt Club, Portland - 3/11/2010

This is a pretty swanky place with some fairly swanky cocktails. I especially liked the Tracy's Wild Ride (Sauza Hornitos tequila, Parfait Amour, muddled cucumber, fresh lime & agave nector) -- and I ask once again: Has there ever been a bad cocktail with cucumber in it?

The web site can be found at both giltclub.com and guiltclub.com, and both seem quite appropriate.

(Picture: Megan, Hannah, and Joe the bartender)

306 NW Broadway, Portland, OR 97209 - (503) 222-4458
giltclub.com - facebook - barfly - yelp - pdxplate

#1011 - Teardrop Lounge, Portland - 3/11/2010

Wow.

The Teardrop came with several rave reviews from friends with reliable judgement of fine cocktails and I was still impressed on my first visit there. I had a traditional Chauncey and a Between The Sheets, and both were as well-made, balanced, and tasty as any cocktails I've ever had.

Portland already had a great richness of neighborhood bars with character, and now they are piling on with great stops for the best quality cocktails. At Teardrop, one wants to drop by regularly, working your way through the menu, the bartender's recommendations, and the massive arrays of bitters and tinctures aligned in little blue bottles like the mad scientists they are.

The decor is spare and elegant and the bartenders were friendly and engaging. I don't think I'll ever visit Portland again without trying to make it there at least once or twice.

1015 NW Everett St., Portland, OR 97209 - (503) 445-8109
teardroplounge.com - cocktailia - yelp - barfly

#1010 - Fez Ballroom, Portland - 3/11/2010

Of course how enjoyable these old ballrooms are is almost entirely dependent on the individual event there on any given night.  The Fez is perfectly serviceable -- and I'm biased in favor of any place with "fez" in the title.  In addition, the event the night I attended ("Shadowplay" goth night) was pleasant and fairly well attended, despite goth interest declining in some areas (not necessarily a bad thing, as such movements tend to be most robust when confined to a fairly underground scene).  I have little idea what other nights hold, but I like this Fez better than the Red Fez in Austin, so right now it's my favorite fez bar in the country.

316 SW 11th Ave., Portland, OR 97205 - (503) 221-7262
fezballroom.com - barfly - yelp

#1009 - Kelly's Olympian, Portland - 3/11/2010

426 SW Washington St., Portland, OR 97204 - (503) 228-3669
Est. 1957 (current location, est. 1902 a few blocks away)
kellysolympian.com - barfly - yelp - citysearch

#1008 - Rock Bottom Brewery, Portland - 3/11/2010

The Portland version of this national chain has something I haven't seen in the Seattle version -- a packed crowd on a weekday night, along with live music.  It wasn't exactly my kind of crowd and it certainly wasn't my kind of music, but at least the place was pulsing.

206 SW Morrison St., Portland, OR 97204 - (503) 796-2739
rockbottom.com/portland - ratebeer.com - yelp - barfly

#1007 - Champion Sports Bar, Portland - 3/11/2010

Meh...

Barfly calls this "The only dedicated sports bar in downtown ..." Portland is my favorite bar town on the west coast, but as a dedicated sports bar (a fairly low standard to begin with), this is a FAIL.

On the weekday evening I attended, a home state college team was playing in the conference tournament, and the hometown NBA team was also playing. But you could not hear either game because they preferred dumb top 40s music. That's not a serious sports bar in my book. The food is standard sports bar nachos and burgers type fare, the drinks are the standard sports bar beer and bad cocktails, and the crowd is standard medium quality hotel boring salesmen (the bar is in the downtown Portland Marriott).

marriott.com - yelp - barfly 
1401 SW Naito Pkwy., Portland, OR 97201 - (503) 499-6393

#1006 #S623 - Avila, Seattle - 3/10/2010

Update: Avila closed in July 2010.

Judging wine bars as simply bars can be a bit problematic. Since I exclude the restaurant/food portion, you're left basically with the ambiance, service, and a tiny fraction of a taste of the wine they have, when you can now get very good wines at virtually any grocery store. And the decor of wine bars is, of course, highly formulaic -- there are going to be servers dressed in black, modern exposed-concrete and steel surfaces, rolled up towels in a basket in the restroom, a touch of abstract art, votive candles on the tables, and small, halogen lamps hanging over the bar.

So setting aside the eclectic and adventurous dinner and appetizer menus at Avila ("AV'-ill-uh"), I'm basically left with a fairly typical wine bar, but with unusually friendly servers (and none of the attitude I've experienced at Smash, just up the road a bit). That makes this a pretty nice little stop if you feel like a couple glasses of wine (and an even better one if you feel like a bite of some interesting food).

1711 N 45th St., Seattle, WA 98103 - (206) 545-7375
avilaseattle.com - seattletimes - thestranger - yelp

#1005 #S622 - Bottleworks, Seattle - 3/10/2010

For a moment I was not sure whether to count Bottleworks as a bar, since it is focused on retail of bottles, and the limited bar area was largely covered in boxes as the staff busily stocked the refrigerators that line the walls and maintain said bottles at temperatures tastefully maintained below the standard grocery store section dedicated primarily to your Bud Light fans picking up a half rack at halftime. But there are some good beers on tap (as well as the great selection of approx. 1,000 bottles to enjoy in the shop, if you'd like). And the table I sat at provided one perhaps the most important feature of all in a bar, which was good conversation -- this one between four people who'd never previously met.

So cheers to Matt ("Vern" to his friends), one of the strangers, who turned out to be the owner, and to cute Emily, and to the bicycling guy whose name I forget. It's a great little place for anyone who likes good beer, and I'll definitely be back.

bottleworksbeerstore.blogspot.com - yelp - bsbrewing - beermapping.com
1710 N 45th St, Seattle, WA 98103 - (206) 633-2437

#1004 #S621 - Blu Water Bistro, Seattle (Greenlake) - (OOO)

Update: This Bluwater Bistro closed in April 2015.



One more bar that I've been to plenty of times but missed from my list.  A nice restaurant with a bar that is fine, but nothing special.







7900 E Green Lake Dr N., Seattle, WA 98103 - (206) 524-3985
Est. May 1, 2002 - Closed April 25, 2015 - Building constructed 1996
bluwaterbistro.com - yelp

#1003 #S620 - Palace Kitchen, Seattle - (OOO)

Another place I've been to many times (the bar, not just the restaurant), but somehow missed on my list.  The Palace Kitchen is, of course, a Tom Douglas place, which means the cocktails are not up to the level of the food, but that's a very high bar (everyone in Seattle already knows about the food at Douglas's places, so no comments necessary on that front).  The bar is pretty much the basics, but it tests your self-discipline with those dang bowls of pistachios sitting around the bar.

2030 5th Ave., Seattle, WA 98121- (206) 448-2001
tomdouglas.com - yelp

#1002 #S619 - Marie Callenders, Seattle - (OOO)

I decided to belatedly add this because Marie's does have a whole separate room for the bar and people clearly go there just for the bar (most dependably one big guy in a hockey shirt who appears to go there every single day). For several years this was a fairly regular haunt for myself and several co-workers at a small software company due to its location (we referred to it as "Murray's," since "Marie's" is not a fit name for a bar). If it's not the most conveniently located bar for you, I really can't think of any other reasons you would go.

9538 1st Ave NE., Seattle, WA 98115 - (206) 526-5785
yelp

#1001 #S618 - Rat & Raven, Seattle - 3/7/2010

The new owners of this space have made some very nice remodeling changes and made a good effort to change the vibe for the better.  It used to be the Emmigrant, supposedly an Irish bar, which was big and boring and suffered enormously by comparison with the Galway Arms right across the street.  The Galway is small and lively, overflowing with interesting people, and remains a bar of considerably more character.  But thanks to the new ownership (expanding from Clever Dunne's on Capitol Hill), the Rat and Raven is now at least a pleasant change of pace.

The R&R now includes a very nice, open, upstairs area, and hosts people playing not only pool and darts, but also shuffleboard, Scrabble and Texas Holdem.  The drinks are unfancy, as you'd expect in the a university district, and the crowd, if not as interesting as across the street, is tad more pleasant than the previous one.


5260 University Way Northeast Seattle, WA 98105 - (206) 524-3166
Est. 2009 - Building constructed: 1926
Previous bars at this location: Irish Emigrant, Century Bar/Cafe/Tavern (Boom Boom Room)
ratandraven
seattleweekly

What's next for Project K-Bar?

Though I have now reached the "K" in "Project K-Bar" (and no, I am not nerdy enough to question whether a K is actually 1024 bars), the project will continue apace.  The next goals are to:

•  Have a drink in every bar in the Seattle city limits
•  Have a drink in 1,000 different Seattle bars

From here on out, each entry in this blog for a Seattle bar will contain, in addition to the total count of bars documented, an #Snnn number indicating the count of Seattle bars.

(Graffiti from the Streamline Tavern)

Identifying and counting all (of what I would count as) bars in Seattle is problematic, but here's my general approach:

• Download the list of all Washington state on-premises liquor licenses (available from the liquor control board here)
• Eliminate all non-Seattle entries
• Eliminate all places that I have already been
• Eliminate all places that I can immediately reject as a "bar" (e.g. for some reason Walmarts have on-premises licenses)
• Determine by visiting each remaining place or other means whether they have an actual bar (as opposed to just restaurants)
• As I approach either goal, download the latest lists of licenses to identify new bars

I've just barely begun this effort, but here are some numbers for the sake of trivia (license info based on December 2009):

• 216 - Number of bars I visited for the first time in 2009
• 617 - Number of the first 1,000 bars in Project K-Bar that are/were in Seattle
• 13,190 - On-premises liquor licenses in Washington state (5,080 off-premises licenses)
• 7,880 - licenses in Washington state that may be bars (this still includes things like private clubs, yacht clubs, legion halls, restaurants that may serve liquor but have no actual bar, and bars that I do not count as "destination bars" such as airport bars, Appleby's, Red Robin, etc.)
• 1,526 - licenses in Seattle that may be bars (see criteria/caveats above)

#1000! - Visions Lounge, Seattle - 3/5/2010

Visions Lounge closed in 2012 and was replaced by RView.

Project K-Bar is about hitting all bars, not just great bars -- and the K-Bar final four event was all about a group rolling into unexpected places.  In that way, the Visions Lounge was fairly representative.  To be fair, our group of 20-some strange-looking people arrived en masse just as they were closing.  On the other hand, the fact that they were closing before midnight on a Friday night pretty much tells you everything you need to know about how interesting the bar is.

The main attraction of Vision Lounge is not a regular clientele of optimologists, but rather the large set of windows looking out from the 28th floors onto... well, not much.  You have a great view of I-5, and you can kinda see the Space Needle, and kinda see Elliot Bay between two buildings, and you can definitely see one of the less attractive angles of downtown buildings.  Columbia Tower Club it is not.  More realistically, given the boring decor, uninteresting drinks, and sorry reputation of the food, the main attraction is that you are staying in the hotel and don't have to walk all of a couple blocks to get to much better bars (poor tourists can be pitied that no one told them that Sip is just around the corner).

Nevertheless, with some heavy cajoling we convinced the grumpy bartender to stay open an extra 20 minutes to experience the dubious joy of being the 1,000th bar on Project K-Bar.  For pictures of the momentous event, plus the visits to bars #997, #998, and #999 and the bus ride in between, see here, and here and here, and (if you have a facebook account) here.


515 Madison St., Seattle, WA 98104 (28th floor of the Renaissance Hotel) - (206) 583-0300
marriott.com - thestranger - seattle met - yelp - citysearch
(Photos by Kym A. & Larry J.)

#999 - The Barrel Tavern, Burien, WA - 3/5/2010

Update: The Barrel Tavern closed in 2015, was briefly replaced by an Indian restaurant, then the building was razed in October 2018.

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The Barrel is a semi-divey bar built in an old 1963 XXX Root Beer Drive-in in Top Hat, the neighborhood between Burien and White Center (there's a nice summary of the history in the B-TownBlog). So it's the big barrel facade that really grabs you.

The menu and drinks are the basics. The Barrel has blues nights and biker crowds, so I think our group arrived at one of its down moments, and I'm interested to see what the crowd is like when it is more full of regulars and less full of K-Bar not-so-secret agents. (Picture is a Larry J. photo of one of the regulars reacting to our group.)

The Barrel Tavern, Burien/White Center, WA
(Photo from whitecenternow.com)

Technical Note: Despite most places listing this with a Seattle address, it doesn't technically count as a Seattle bar, as my best efforts to place it relative to the crazy Seattle southern city limits line puts it a tad south of the city.









11051 1st Avenue S., Burien, WA 98168 - (206) 244-7390

Closed 2015 - Building constructed 1963

Previous bars in this location: None known
thebarreltavern.com - b-townblog - city-data - seattle weekly - yelp

#998 - Mac's Triangle Pub, Seattle - 3/5/2010

This is one of four "Triangles" I have been to in Seattle, along with the old Triangle Pub in Pioneer Square, the Ould Triangle in Greenwood, and the Triangle Tavern (sometimes "Triangle Lounge") in Fremont, now closed.

This Triangle was the highlight of the of the K-Bar final four event.  The space is nice, the bartender was great, the patrons were varied and having a highly entertaining karaoke night.  (You can see a video of one of our party singing -- after another member getting serenaded for an ersatz birthday -- here).  The Triangle is also the only bar I can remember ever visiting that has a dedicated Men's Room (i.e. not unisex bathroom) that does not a have a urinal.

(Larry J. photo)
9454 Delridge Way SW., Seattle, WA 98106 - (206) 763-0714
facebook - seattle weekly - yelp - urbanspoon

#997 - Tug Tavern, Seattle - 3/5/2010

Update: The Tug Inn closed in July 2020. The following explanation was posted on their facebook page:

"Hal never owned the property. The property owner sold the land way back before COVID, but at the time it looked like they would be happy to extend a new lease for the tug while they got everything in order for at least a few years. They were going to use the field behidn the building as an HQ for their plumbing company once they got it built out. What happened next is that it turns out the permitting and construction costs on that would be waaayyyy more than expected. Because of that, they terminated teh least so that they will be able to use the tub building itself. Viola, no more tug." -- Danielle Northart, July 25, 2020

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"The Tug has been known as a dive bar that is full of violent and crazy drunks.  This reputation is entirely false."  -- The Tug web site

As some of the yelpers make clear (and by all rights should have known, before going there and complaining), if you don't like dive bars, don't go to Uncle Hal's Tug Tavern. I do like dive bars, and while it's hard to judge a bar when you're rolling in with an unexpected party of 20-some people in black spy-wear, this one seemed like a pretty good one. There are the ramshackle personal touches -- a brown couch facing a corner, an R-rated puzzle on the wall, and a picket-fenced patio extending into the parking lot -- and there were colorful regulars.

The entourage of people in black was due to this being the first stop on the bus to celebrate the final four bars of the count to 1,000. Said one regular, who was on the phone as we arrived, "I've got to go. The Blues Brothers just came in."   (Larry J. photo)

2216 SW Orchard St., Seattle, WA 98106 - (206) 768-8852
yelp - seattle weekly - the stranger - flickr/mural

#996 - Hard Rock Cafe, Seattle - 3/4/2010

Being a Hard Rock Cafe, this place is primarily yuppie-ish 20-year-olds mingling among artifacts of the rock icons of 50-year-olds.  There is, of course, the nod to famous locals -- Hendrix, Cobain, etc. --

and among this stuff you'll actually find some items less than 50 years old.  The wood decor and lights are pleasant, the staff were all unusually nice, the bar is serviceable, and the food is fairly good.  It also looks like they're trying to book some bands that are a little more hip than Top Forty homages on the walls (with the friends of the band standing out sharply from the preppy regulars) .  It's not the sort of place I'll go often, but if you react to the term "guitar god" with reverence rather than rolling your eyes, you'll enjoy it.


116 Pike St., Seattle, WA 98101 - (206) 204-2233
hardrock.com - yelp

#995 - Still Liquor, Seattle - 3/2/2010

Still Liquor follows the speakeasy fashion, but does so in a simple, timeless way. The large space feels fairly isolated, despite it's Capitol Hill location, thanks to the space in the old, half underground BMW paint shop, down a narrow alley, and a minimalist but elegant treatment.  Just one subtle sign tells you you're there -- no blaring neon giveaways from liquor and beer companies give away the dark windows -- Still has the self confidence to present an exterior that no one would ever find if they weren't looking for it.  And the cocktails are artful without being flamboyant -- you'll want to work your way through the entire menu of special drinks.

P.S. Has anyone EVER had a bad cocktail with muddled cucumber?

1524 Minor Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101 - (206) 467-4075
stillliquor.com - the stranger - yelp