#2673 - Gas Lamp Bar and Grill, Issaquah, WA - 12/14/2014

The Gas Lamp is located in a sort of industrial park area of Issaquah, almost as if it had anticipated the now familiar settings for craft microbreweries. It is a neighborhood place, and like most neighborhood places these days, it is a sports bar, although I don't know how long it has had that theme -- it was established in 1970 (note the Robert Crumb logo still used today) and has several vestiges of a mid-century auto and gas station theme.

Today it is a fairly typical suburban sports bar, but the paraphernalia show personal touches accrued over years, which makes a place much more inviting than so many places that seem like they could have purchased their entire decor from the sports store in the mall a week ago. They have a fairly typical contemporary neighborhood sports bar menu, with 14 pretty good beers on tap, burgers, sandwiches, salads, and classic American breakfast options.

1315 NW Mall St, Issaquah, WA 98027 - (425) 392-4547               
Est. 1970 - Building constructed: 1970
Previous bars in this location: None known
Web site: gaslampbarandgrill.com - facebook
Reviews: yelp - tripadvisor 

#2672 - The Ram, Issaquah, WA - 12/14/2014

The Ram is a typical, large, modern sports bar with lots of TVs, lots of beer choices (including several of their own craft brews), and a large menu of contemporary pub food, including burgers, sandwiches, wings, nachos, etc. Tracing their lineage back to the Deluxe Tavern in Lakewood, WA, The Ram is now a familiar, family-owned chain of over 30 restauratnts across the western and midwest U.S.


965 NE Park Drive, Northeast Federal Drive, Issaquah, WA 98029 - (425) 313-0415               
Est. Sep 30, 2013 - Building constructed: 2013
Previous bars in this location: None known
Web site: theram.com - facebook
Reviews: washingtonbeer - issaquahreporter - yelp - tripadvisor 

#2671 #S1298 - Thud Suan, Seattle (Capitol Hill) - 12/11/2014

Thud Suan sits a bit off the beaten track of Seattle's Capitol Hill retail core, at the base of a bunch of new condos and along the city's only street that cuts all the way from Elliot Bay to Lake Union. It seems like a tough place to make a go of a restaurant -- Dulces Bistro last less than a year here, and I gave Thudsuan low odds of making it more than three years (the median life new restaurants), but it has now surpassed that.

The owner is a veteran of local Thai restaurants (Root Table, Racha, Pestle Rock) and hoped that a more "adventurous" combination of traditional Thai and local seafood would help his own place survive. My meal seemed like fairly pedestrian, but perhaps I stuck too closely the standards. They serve cocktails that are a bit too far on the sweet and juicy side for my tastes, but at least they offer some originals, including some of their own infusions.

As they've outlived the average now, I shall have to give them a few more tries.

1818 E Madison St, Seattle, WA 98122 - (206) 556-4849
Est. Nov 2, 2014 - Building constructed: 2012
Previous bars in this location: Dulces Bistro
Web site: thudsuanthai.com - facebook
Reviews: capitolhillseattle - yelp - tripadvisor 

#2670 #S1297 - Kremwerk, Seattle (Downtown) - 12/6/2014

Kremwerk is not a bar you go to for the drinks, but it is one of the cooler dance clubs in Seattle. "The Kremwerk & Timbre Room Complex is a queer-centric 21+ nightclub and live music venue, specializing in progressive electronic music and queer culture."

1809 Minor Ave #10, Seattle, WA 98101 - (206) 682-2935
Est. Feb 14, 2014 - Building constructed: 1917
Previous bars in this location: None known (Habesha was upstairs)
Web site: kremwerk.com - facebook
Articles ranked: thestranger - dancemusicnw - thestranger - yelp - instagram 

#2669 #S1296 - Serious Pie, Seattle (Capitol Hill) - 12/6/2014

Update: The Serious Pie in this location closed in May 2017 at the behest of Starbucks.

Sweet fennel sausage and roasted pepper pizza
Serious Pie, Capitol Hill, Seattle

 For my money the best pizza in Seattle -- actually my favorite pizza I've ever had, including in New York, Chicago and Italy -- is at Serious Pie. And this one has cocktails! This third instantiation of Tom Douglas's pizza joints is inside the Starbucks Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room, the Willie Wonka-like coffee roasting plant and "espresso & brewed coffee megabar," where you can watch your beans exit the roasters and rush through copper pneumatic tubes to the barristas and grinders. The large space is a 1920s Packard dealership remodeled to LEED specifications and re-imagined as a massive, steampunk coffee cathedral.

Starbucks Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room
Capitol Hill, Seattle

The pizza is naturally excellent. There are choices for people who like lettuce on their pizza -- or clams, leeks, or eggs. But if you are a carnivore you must, must, must try the one with sweet fennel sausage, roasted peppers, and provolone. Do not jump prematurely into any agreement to share -- you will want all of this pizza.

It's not the sort of place you're likely to come for a (non-coffee) drink, but the cocktails are very good. On this visit I quite enjoyed the "Old and Bitter," plainly named with people like me in mind.

Serious Pie, Capitol Hill, Seattle

1124 Pike St, Seattle, WA 98101 - (206) 923-8012                              
Est. Dec 5, 2014 - Closed May 1, 2017 - Building constructed: 1920
Previous bars in this location: None known
Web site: seriouspieseattle.com
Reviews: yelp - capitolhillseattle - zagat - seattlemet - eater 

#2668 #S1295 - Terra Plata, Seattle - 12/6/2014

The best way to get a sense for Terra Plata is to simply take a quick look through the photos on their Facebook page or yelp. You'll see a wide array of lovely small plates, and eventually you'll get to a photo of the rooftop garden. Owner/chef Tamara Murphy was well known in Seattle for her work at Campagne and Elliot Bay Cafe, her Belltown restaurant Brasa, and her Smoke Farm event Burning Beast. At this restaurant in a 100-year-old auto showroom at the edge of the Capitol Hill neighborhood, the food is the star, but the cocktail menu -- heavily reliant on the garden -- is not to be underestimated.

For this visit I enjoyed a Dexter Gordon (cognac, Zucca, Chinato d'Erbetti, absinth, bitters) and a Cucumber Snow Cone. For dinner I had roast pig (chorizo, clams, tomato, hot smoked paprika, sofrito, bay-scented potato, chicharron) and Trista had the Beef Salpicon (charred wagyu sirloin, chili-potato puree, vegetable escabeche, chimichurri). Yum.

1501 Melrose Ave, Seattle, WA 98122 - (206) 325-1501
Est. Oct 26, 2011 - Building constructed: 1912
Previous bars in this location: None known
Web site: terraplata.com - facebook 
Articles ranked: seattlemag - theinfatuation - seattletimes - thestranger - yelp - tripadvisor - zagat 

#2667 #S1294 - Himalayan Sherpa House, Seattle - 12/5/2014

Himalayan Sherpa House, Tangletown, Seattle, WA

Update: Himalayan Sherpa House closed Aug 15, 2021.

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If you drive around Seattle, perhaps letting friends and events take you from one area to the next, you'll discover a lot of distinct neighborhoods, but it is very unlikely that you'll discover "Tangletown." In addition to being off the beaten path from any one well known area to another, the surrounding streets are all cattywampus, as the roads angling off the curves of Greenlake intersect with the neat grid platted north/south and a third section of angular streets that looks like it was pasted over the top the others in some kindergarten project.

But if you do stumble upon the "microhood" where Wallingford meets Greenlake, you know there's a small cache of bars and restaurants that make it well worth firing up your Google Maps. This brief commercial stretch of 55th/56th Street has a cozy, decades old dive (Leny's), an abstrusely named, upscale restaurant from one of Seattle's most famous chefs (mkt.), a Japanese dessert bakery (Hiroki), a top notch craft beer bar (Burgundian), a brew pub, a donut shop, and a hot dog shop -- and once hosted Seattle's best tiki bar. Now you can add to that a Nepalese/Tibetan/Indian restaurant named "Himalayan Sherpa House" not simply because of the evocative description but because their family name is actually "Sherpa."

Tangletown neighborhood, near in Greenlake

The vibe is elegant and intimate, and the food and cocktails were quite pleasant.The small bar across from the white tablecloths has a limited by nice selection of wines, cocktails, and beers including a house brew that thew worked on with Boundary Bay.

2227 N 56th St, Seattle, WA 98103 - (206) 633-3538               
Est. Nov 9, 2014 - Building constructed: 1928
Previous bars in this location: Eva, Brie and Bordeaux
Web site: himalayansherpahouse.com - facebook
Reviews: seattlegreenlaker - eater - wallyhood - yelp - tripadvisor