Café Presse aka: Cafe Presse

it was delicious!

Cafe Presse (or Presse) opened yesterday and I was lucky enough to walk by on my way home from work. I popped my head in last night and can not get over how awesome this place is going to be for the neighborhood. Amongst all the other great offerings on the burgeoning 12th & Madison food corridor, Presse stands out for it’s more casual feel and (can’t believe I’m going to type this) price point. It’s not expensive. I can imagine going here daily. At the bar salads were 4 bucks. Everything seemed well under $9 and I recall a few $4 items, like fries. The food looked great (I had eaten).

I normally don’t like flat screen televisions where I drink or eat, but was thrilled with one flatscreen on the wall that appears to only turn on for World Cup matches (evidenced by a chalkboard underneath with this week’s World Cup game times).

What else? The decor is sophisticated but not too fancy. I felt at home and would walk in any old time just to grab a beer or read the paper. I’m a little afraid that I fell in love so quickly with this joint. Hopefully it will be a lasting love because right now I’m on cloud 9.

I interviewed this week with Jim Drohman, one of the owners and the executive chef for here and Le Pichet, and it sounds sooo good. It will continue the Le Pichet tradition of making in-house as much as humanly possible including all the charcuterie and stuff like that. I can’t wait!

It looks like there’s a menu on their site:

http://cafepresseseattle.com/pdf/0207.pdf

and it’s supposed to open in June.

A new cafe from the owners of Le Pichet looks very promising. They want it to be more of a conversational hang out than the dinner house that they believe Le Pichet has become. Here’s an excerpt from an article:

“In Seattle, when you get together with someone and want a drink, you say, ‘I know a great bar,’ but in Paris there’s the corner spot. The place you go for coffee and croissants in the morning, a drink or light lunch in the afternoon” and a bite to eat at night. That, he says, is what they’re aiming for at Café Presse. “We’ll have one menu all day long, so if you want steak frites at 9 in the morning or at 1 a.m., you can have it.” They’ll also sell magazines and newspapers (hence the “presse”), keep menu prices modest, offer his much beloved poulet rôti (whole roast chicken for two) to eat in or take-out, and stay open from early morning till the wee hours.

He and Herron hope that customers on Capitol Hill will use their new 70-seat cafe as they would the working-class neighborhood cafes in Paris. “We want to make it a comfortable space that will have a broad appeal to a lot of people,” he says, describing an “industrial” 2,200-square-foot space whose architectural features will including open beams and skylights.

From Café Presse to bring Parisian “corner spot” to Capitol Hill

This is only a couple of blocks from the Robot Co-op office, so I’m really looking forward to this place opening up.