#1801 Icicle Brewing Company, Leavenworth, WA - 6/3/2012

Icicle Brewing Co., Leavenworth, WA

Icicle Brewing is a new brewery and tasting room in Leavenworth, WA, the only current brewery in the tourist-teeming Bavarian village that the old railroad and timber community transformed itself into in the 1960s.  Owners Oliver and Pam Brulotte also own the München Haus up the road. The building is, of course, built in the Bavarian village style of the town, it has a small inside tasting room area and a larger outdoor patio with picnic tables. Pictures of four generations of the Brulotte family show that they have a long history with hop farming and brewing.

The Icicle has limited food items and of course a choice of their beers, which have already gained some impressive attention:

"Icicle Brewing and head brewer Dean Priebe brought four medals home from the U.S. Open Beer Championship against some of the best and largest breweries in the world. The competition was held July 31 in Atlanta, Ga.  Icicle Brewing won a gold medal for its Dirtyface Amber in the Marzen/Oktoberfest division, a silver medal for it Bootjack IPA in the American IPA division and bronze medals for its Khaos Kolsch (German Kolsch) and Big George Porter (Baltic Porter)." --- Wenatchee World 8/17/2012

935 Front Street, Leavenworth, WA 98826 - (509) 548.2739
Est. April 2011
Previous bars in this location: None
Web site: iciclebrewing.com - facebook
Reviews: bierkast - beeradvocate - yelp - tripadvisor

#1800 Bubba's Road House, Sultan, WA - 6/3/2012

Bubba's Road House, Sultan, WA

How could we not stop at a place named Bubba's Road House, with a wall reading "EAT BIG FOOD," and a reader board promising extreme midget wrestling? Okay, so the midget wrestling was not going on at the time, but obviously the fact that Bubba's hosts midget wrestling in Sultan, Washington -- any midget wrestling, let alone extreme -- is a clear sign that this bar is not to be ignored.

In addition to the cultural events, Bubba's has fairly standard beers and cocktails and some pretty good BBQ and bar food offerings. It has a large beer garden in back where you can play horseshoes and watch the smoker at work. Like most of Sultan, it is right along Highway 2, where skiers and hikers stream past on their way to Stevens Pass and the Cascade Loop. But lest you think extreme midget wrestling to be the biggest thing to ever hit Sultan, way back in 1968, when the town was even smaller than now (about 1,000 people), Betty Nelson's Organic Strawberry Farm hosted The Grateful Dead, Santana, Muddy Waters, Richard Prior, about 40 other bands and 20,000 hippies in what was probably the first large, multi-day, outdoor rock festival, the Sky River Rock Festival and Lighter Than Air Fair.

Picture is Bubba himself, in Bubba's Road House, Sultan, WA

Barbecue at Bubba's Road House, Sultan, WA

924 Stevens Ave, Sultan, WA 98294 - (360) 793-3950
Est. Dec 31, 2002

Web site: facebook
Reviews: yelp

#1799 #S1033 - Las Margaritas Bullpen Lounge, Seattle - 5/29/2012

A very average American Mexican restaurant with a very typical average American Mexican restaurant bar.

14356 Aurora Ave. N, Seattle, WA 98133 - (206) 362 7527
Est. 1996 - Building constructed: 1968
Previous bars in this location: None known
lasmargaritasrest.com - facebook - yelp

#1798 #S1032 - Green Leaf, Seattle - 5/27/2012

Green Leaf is the second incarnation of a popular Vietnamese restaurant in Seattle's International District, this one in a curious basement space in the old Labor Temple building. The building itself is between the heavy foot traffic areas of Belltown and lower Queen Anne, where one presumes that it is particularly critical to establish a reputation that will attract people a bit off the beaten paths.

This wasn't always the case. From the 40s into the 90s this location hosted the Labor Temple Restaurant and Lounge, a main hangout for a thriving union scene, where workers shared drinks in the windowless lounge area they called "The Pit." Indeed, it appears to have been in the late 90s the last remaining labor temple lounge in the country. As the labor movement faded, the owners changed the name in the late 90s to the "Samuel Gompers Steak House," remembered as simply "Gompers." But Gompers did not last long, and it has subsequently had a revolving set of restaurant-bars with wildly varying themes -- the Greek Zoey Blue Plate Special, the Italian Vela Pizzeria, the Mediterranean Mira! / Faina.

Green Leaf may have a longer lifespan in the space than those, with a well established reputation and a fairly large menu of some of the better Vietnamese dishes in the city. The delicate and ornate decor feel like a different world from the aging, functional exterior of the upper floors -- even including a small pond and grotto. The lounge area features an antique bar and some interesting cocktails.

2800 1st Ave, Seattle, WA 98121 - (206) 340-1388            
Est. May 16, 2012 - Building constructed: 1942
Previous bars in this location: Labor Temple Restaurant and Lounge, Gompers Steak House, Zoey Blue Plate Bistro, Vela Pizzaria & Lounge, Mira! / Faina
Web site: greenleaftaste.com -  facebook
Reviews: seattletimes - thestranger - seattleweekly - seattlemet - yelp - urbanspoon 

#1797 #S1031 - Easy Joe's, Seattle - 5/27/2012

Update: Easy Joe's closed in late July or early August 2018.

When Easy Joe's moved from North Bend to Capitol Hill (in the location now hosting Skelly and the Bean), the focus was on latter mid-century comfort foods. The new location, in a century-old building in the middle of Pioneer Square has turned much more toward the basics. There is more of sports theme, and the menu is a pretty straightforward set of options for burgers and familiar sports bar fare.

Easy Joe's, Pioneer Square, Seattle

704 1st Ave, Seattle, WA 98104 - (206) 623-3440
Est. April 2012 - Building constructed: 1903
Previous bars in this location: Clipper Tavern, Yankee Clipper, Whoo's Inn, Oasis Tavern, Imo, Bonzai Asian Pub
Web site: easyjoes.com - facebook
Reviews: link - seattleweekly - thestranger - yelp - thrillist - pioneersquare.org 

#1796 - The Hub, Concrete, WA - 5/26/2012

The Hub has a 30-foot, single-plank, mahogany backbar that arrived in town in 1912 and is the longest single-plank bar in the state of Washington. The bar was originally installed in another building, the Olympia bar. Most of the buildings in this part of Concrete date back to the 1920s, after two large fires had destroyed most the buildings along Main Street by 1921.  I do not have a date for how long a bar has been in this space, but according to Charles Dwelley's local history "So They Called The Town Concrete," it was renamed from "The Club" to "The Hub" due "to first state liquor sale regulations." Presuming that this refers to the introduction of prohibition in Washington state, the renaming happened at the beginning of 1916, and the place was opened by a previous bartender at the Olympia sometime between 1912 and 1916.

The town of Concrete, just off state route 20 in the upper Skagit valley, near where the Baker River merges into the Skagit, has been struggling in various ways for over forty years. The cement factory that once supplied half the cement needed for Grand Coulee Dam, shut down in 1968, and the timber industry dried up as well. The city counsel now tries to deal with public drunkeness that sometimes involves shooting on Main Street. The population is less than the number that once worked on the Baker damn alone, and The Hub is the only real bar in a town that once supported eleven. European Americans were gold prospecting in this area by 1858, and settlements began arising on either side of the Baker River in the 1870s. Peg-leg Everett, the first to discover the large limestone deposits, had a homestead on the east bank, and by 1905 the Washington Portland Cement Co. was operating there, and the community was named "Cement City." Meanwhile, Richard Challenger had named the area on the opposite bank "Minnehaha," though by 1890 it was known as "Baker," and a competing cement company, the Superior Portland Cement Co., was in operation on the west bank by 1908. In 1909, Baker and Cement City merged into "Concrete, Washington."

Concrete has definitely had its colorful, small town moments, such as when town residents discovered that the local librarian was a professional dominatrix, when the winner of the mayor's race had to defeat Mercury the dog (ibid), and when a short circuit at the cement factory during Orson Welles' famed "War of the World" broadcast led to some particularly excitable reactions. Similarly, The Hub itself presents a general semblance of (dive bar) normality -- the standard beers and liquors, the pulltabs and pool tables -- but with some old, idiosyncratic touches mixed in. For example, there is the taxidermy bobcat that looks like it's spent a few generations in bobcat hell, and there's the wooden child's coffin adorned with a giant wood housefly (WTF?).

Presiding over the large bar on the night we arrived was one small and occasionally confused young woman, who provided all food and all drinks by herself. While there were not a lot of people there when we arrived, this seemed impressive given the occasional rushes, the fairly rough clientele who sometimes dropped by, a ghost, and the city council's concern over public drunkeness that has culminated in gunshots on Main St. But it was great sitting at the grand old bar, once our knees got accustomed to the short distance between stool and bar, and its the sort of place that one hopes will always be there.

86 List from The Hub Tavern, Concrete, WA

45914 Main St, Concrete, WA 98237 - (360) 853-8741           
Est. ?
Web site: facebook
Reviews: jeepspubtaverns
Walking tour of Concrete

#1795 - Three Fingered Jack's Saloon, Winthrop, WA - 5/26/2012

Three-Fingered Jack's Saloon, Winthrop, WA - est. 1972

On its web site and on a large sign hanging inside, Three Fingered Jack's bills itself as "The oldest legal saloon in Washington state." This has led various visitors and articles to assume that it is one of the oldest bars in the state. But in fact this designation refers back only to Aug 16, 1979, when the Washington State Liquor Control Board made it legal to use the word "saloon" in a bar's signs and ads for the first time since statewide prohibition. (The bar received a citation for using the word in their sign when they opened in 1972.) A life dating back to the early 1970s is a considerable accomplishment for a bar, but of course it does not put it among the oldest bars in the state.

(BTW, the current Winthrop Town Hall stands in a building constructed in 1891 to host Guy Waring's long running Duck Brand Saloon.)

 Like the rest of the the town of Winthrop, Jack's is designed in an old west theme. In 1972 the town decided to remake itself in a thematic way, to attract tourists off the new Highway 20. It's now a touristy but charming place, in the northeast corner of the scenic Cascade Loop, where Mule Deer wander onto the roads. Jack's is a fairly large place with a sort of lodge feel and a lively crowd in the bar. They have a decent selection of beers, basic cocktails and fairly good bar food (burgers, steaks, pizzas, etc.).

176 Riverside Ave, Winthrop, WA 98862 - 509-996-2411
Est. 1972
Previous bars in this location: Winthrop Pool Hall
Web site: 3fingeredjacks.com
Reviews: yelp - tripadvisor - urbanspoon - travbuddy