ninotchka39

The lack of smoke these days is indeed troubling and disorienting. But it is still the best place to get a stiff one to start the workday right!

I know everyone raves about Black Bottle. And I’m not one of those people who cry every time they think of how the Olde Belltowne was, and lament endlessly the dearth of dingy places and the encroachment of the IT crowd. —Because I LIKE good food and wine, as well as dingy places. But I looked really nice and dressy and I have a lovely voice and a pleasant demeanor (not that it’s really any server’s business what my voice or personal style is) and everyone still seemed to want me dead. Also, it was still light, and the place utterly lacked any sort of ambience under those conditions. And let’s face it, Seattle has many, many hours of sunlight in spring and summer, so any design should take that into consideration. It felt, with the whitegray outdoor light unbuffered by any gentle and warm indoor tones, a little too Soviet for me. And I didn’t go there for borscht.

good stuff and plenty of it and all the soviet-era ambience you could want. and more dates than i’ve had in the past month. if only they sold Chex Party Mix and Twizzlers, it would be perfect.

The menus are curiously big and as much a circus of fonts as an oldschool punk show poster, which makes reading them difficult in a place with such small booths and so crowdy a bar. But the drinks and food are good (mmmm, a perfect vanilla lemondrop: why do people use ‘vanilla’ as a pejorative?) and the afterdark atmosphere is perfect. And you can close your fancy curtains around your tiny booth, the better to study the hypertrophic menu or gaze longingly into your companion’s barely-visible eyes over candlelight. Just be sure to stow your feet and luggage securely beneath your little tiny booth, or someone will fall over them and into you and your vanilla lemondrop and your beautiful date while navigating the perilously narrow aisles.

I’ve only ever eaten Uighur food in Beijing. It was brilliant food, but the best part is the Uighur are Turkic, and unrelated to Chinese ethnically or linguistically or culturally and it is now no longer illegal for the Qu’ran to be published, or Islam practiced, in Xinjiang Uighur A.P. This, commingled with Internet access, has led to a revival of pan-Turkic sentiment and increased awareness of Central Asian – Middle Eastern cultural connections. If pink is the new red, and Pamuk the new Calvino, then Central Asia is the next 1980s Japan. Or at least the next ___ (you choose).

Unless you like SE English accents and the sort of people who only go on packaged tours to somewhere close (think Cabo or Mazatlan for people who make their home in Riverside) where they can be absolutely certain there their compatriots will, by sheer force of number, aggression, and volume, overwhelm and outman the native population, stay away. Failure to heed my advice will likely resort in grievous emotional and mental harm.

Dark interior, spookycool biomorphic metalwork on the patio, fireplace in-the-round inside. Good bartenders, tasty food, sweet deals at happy hour, and a nice ambience if it weren’t for the yuppy mating season vibe. It is comforting to know, however, that every type of person has a place where they can go and be with their kind and inflict neither their fuzzy high-heeled boots nor their office-work jargon on the rest of us. Unless you enjoy hearing bores in suits lecture you on the arcana of anejo tequila while trying to look down your shirt, stay away. Stay far away.

GREAT beer selection for the Teutonic at heart, but the seating even in the bar part just feels like you’re still in a restaurant or, worse yet, a spaghetti-dinner fundraiser at an Elks lodge in some vaguely midwestern semirural locale. If you sit at the bar, though, you can look at the beauty that is you and forget about the charity bingo that should be going on around you. And even YOU start to look sexier with a pint of Hoegarten in ya.

Cozy. It’s cozy and intimate and that can be too much or too little depending on your state of mind or your date or the drugs you’re on. BUT, Drew and Ben (and I’m sure, in an alternate galaxy) the austere and unapproachable guy from the Rendezvous are lovely hosts who will welcome you effusively and then you will drink good drinks and enjoy not sitting if that is what you are not able to do. It’s tiny, and that’s the way it is. If you want space, go to a Seahawks show. Plus you can get Drew’s face tattooed on you next door if you bring the flash and the cash.

Great jukebox with old punk standards, bands whose members get wasted there, a bit of r&b and Fleetwood Mac and the unavoidable nod to the Buena Vista Social Club and its discographic legacy. The red and green salsas are both the most foul ever, unless you have a fetish for carbolic acid, but all the bartenders are good and pour strong drinks. Also, happy hour is a buck off whatever, except food, and who needs food at that time of night anyway. Which is good, because there isn’t any. Privacy curtains hide you from prying eyes outside, so if your mistress is a punk rock princess who likes fierce unblended margaritas and hear Sloppy Seconds and Social D interrupted by “Rhiannon,” you’ve found your new home.