herodotus88

dean raises his own beef. to paraphrase hemingway:
“These hamburgers and fried asparagus are too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don’t want to mix emotions up with food like that. You lose the taste.”

is this in capitol hill, as 43places claims, or the CD? Ofcourse it’s the CD, but with the addition of tougo one can imagine it eventually, maybe, gentrifying into a blurry border between the two. this week-old cafe features a simple, well executed interior space with a cool ceiling, retro ‘40’s lights, wifi, and plenty of vertical proof that ‘wasabi green’ is still working as the color of our times. once inside you will not believe you are in the same building that one views from the street. the proprietor is a great guy. along with recently opened victrola on pike, and the new fuel in montlake, there is a surge of great independents. but this is the only one sharing names with a town in burkina faso and a japanese kanji. only a few blocks away from katy’s cafe on 20th and union, hopefully they will both prosper.

a well organized small half marathon here every april, good warmup for the marathons to come. this little town is off the beaten track, and there’s not much there, but the ferry ride alone is beautiful enough to make an occasional trip here worth the effort. if you’re just visiting the town the local bus service is sufficient, ie don’t bother bringing car onto ferry.

don’t get your hopes up too high. but it has a couple bars, a couple cafes, and nice stairway up a viewey monument hill. a pleasant enough little town, i liked it. not the sort of place you’d go out of your way to see, but once yer there, it’s a pretty pleasant spot.

obsessively tea, and the interior is infitely hip in that sorta chi-chi vaguely post-zen sparse asian clever yet low-budge ‘ready-made’ ikea way. these designers are the types who did office spaces for dot-coms: clean clever cheap, an aroma of industrial, a nose of brady-bunch retro.

great tea, nice atmosphere, good light, simple service, cool and typically populated with black-wearing goatee-sporting american apparel LA-wannabe types, yet still, strangely, the place is just enjoyable, not oppressively hip or self aware. the teas are fun to smell. they ain’t cheap, but hey this is the town that moved a cup of coffee from 25cents to $4.20.

no real thrills or spills, this is your basic seattle tiny neighborhood espresso joint, serving people waiting for the bus, escaping power outages, and loitering away hopefully brief periods of unemployment. they had pretty good food for a while, simple but good sandwiches and stuff for lunch, not sure if that is still around since the founders sold out and took a walk with their wierd elk painting to start a new restaurant on 12th ave. i think katey’s is still not open at night, so don’t get any funny about needing a coffee after sunset: ain’t gonna happen. great yoga, bicycles, and a hipster micro-cinema are all on the same block! expert tip: check out the replicas of seattle art museum ancient camel statues on the far corner of the block: bring a camera and get a pic of the kids.

nanung is a recently opened cafe a couple blocks off the ave on 45th. they’ve got the classic regular espresso drinks (very well done, cafe d’arte beans), + teas and bubble teas, a tiny selection of nibbly european pastries/chocolates, and super attentive service. the interior space is really pleasant, and so far the place is unknown – always quiet and tons of chairs. i’m pretty certain there is plenty of wifi. light is good – it’s got good reading potential. my only complaint is that the majority of the chairs are pretty spartan bamboo, a tough on me bony butt. maybe yours has more padding ;)

this mostly unknown little gem could be the most pleasant, chill place to watch a movie in seattle. good pizza and microbrews are served in both the foyer (check out the awesome nouveau-artisan handmade wallpaper) and the theatre. admission is about $5, a great deal. neighborhood parking within 1-2 blocks is usually easy. the movie selections themselves are a bit obscure and arcane… but when they have something good, it’s worth seeing it here.