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The Latest on Auto Battery

Capitol Hill’s first “true” sports bar set to open mid-March.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Feb 12, 2010 at 02:19PM Speech Bubble 0 Comments

Owner Laura Olson (seen here at Po Dog) says the bar will have 16 televisions and “two or three” shuffleboard tables.

I first read about Auto Battery on the Capitol Hill Seattle blog. The new East Union sports bar is next door to—and brought to us by the owner of—Po Dog haute hot dog emporium.

But I know of some sports fans who dwell incongruously among the hill’s many tapas boites and yoga studios, and who are rather desperate for some more information on Auto Battery. So I called up Po Dog’s Laura Olson and inquired as to what the deal was. She said Auto Battery is set to open in mid-March, but a lot of decisions have yet to be made.

For instance, Olson knows there will be a happy hour with food and drink specials, but doesn’t yet know the HH hours. She knows the menu will have hot dogs, natch, but there will be other food items too—she’s just not sure what those will be.

She did say that there will be 16 televisions and two or three shuffleboard tables. As reported on CHS, the bar will open each morning at 6am as a coffee shop, offering customers pastries, free wifi, and news on the many tellies. If you’re wondering what sort of coffee Auto Battery will serve, sorry. Olson doesn’t know yet.

Why a sports bar? Because, says Olson, Capitol Hill doesn’t really have a “true” sports bar. Why Auto Battery? Because the building where you’ll find it used to house an auto battery shop.

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Tags: Openings, Capitol Hill, Sports, Junk Food

Breaking Booze News

Booze News! A Boutique Gin Distillery Coming to Capitol Hill

Sun Liquor owner Michael Kleebeck hopes to open his distillery and tasting room by late summer 2010.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Feb 12, 2010 at 10:43AM Speech Bubble 2 Comments

Klebeck hopes to create a gin in the tradition of his beloved Hendrick’s

Thanks to head barman Erik Chapman, Capitol Hill cocktail lounge Sun Liquor is already a destination for gin lovers. Now owner Michael Klebeck—who also co-owns the Top Pot Doughnut chain—plans to open his own boutique gin distillery and tasting room nearby at 514 E Pike Street.

“Gin is so clean,” says Klebeck, who loves the deliciously cucumbery Hendrick’s, from Scotland. “It’s an alcohol that tells you when you’ve had enough.” While he is not a trained distiller, Klebeck says he has always been a chemistry geek and plans to use innovation, coupled with properly installed, top-of-the-line equipment, to create a boutique gin in the English style. Botanicals will be sourced from a farm in Eastern Washington.

Klebeck has already applied for a craft distillers license and begun to smash up the interior of a 1930s warehouse near the Mercedes dealership on Pike.

No word yet on what the gin will be called, though it will be packaged under the Sun Liquor Manufacturing Company label, and will be easily distinguishable from some of the other small-batch bottles made nearby. “I love the Pacific Northwest, but I would never put a salmon on the bottle,” says Klebeck.

He says the distillery should be up and running in five to six months.

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Tags: Openings, Capitol Hill, Gin, Locaboozers

Openings

In the Red Wine Bar Set to Open on Phinney Avenue

Welcome to the new generation of wine bar, where the food is cheap, the plates mismatched, and the owner knows your name.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Feb 03, 2010 at 12:00AM Speech Bubble 0 Comments

Something simple: In the Red will offer $5 snacks like bruschetta—“food that goes well with wine,” says co-owner Brian Folino.

Five dollar small plates, $5 wines by the glass, generous promotions, and plenty of vegan options: this is how Brian Folino and Chad Campbell will lure customers to In the Red, the cafe and wine bar that they plan to open in early March. Folino says the prices (and the name) are a response to the languid economy. With so many restaurants and bars offering happy hours to stay in business, he figured, why not offer happy hour prices all the time?

Folino has toiled at a long list of local restaurants (Volterra and The Brooklyn among them) but says he was most inspired by the new crop of small winebar/coffeeshop hybrids like Fonte downtown and Citizen on Queen Anne. But the business plan also calls to mind the approach of Greenwood’s Gainsbourg and Vermillion on Capitol Hill: tiny neighborhood places that break down the notion that a wine bar should feel slick and upwardly mobile. If Purple Cafe and Wine Bar is a metaphor for our city in its early-aught boom days, these are the wine bars of recession-era Seattle.

Folino envisions a mom-and-pop feel—the 50-seat space at 6510 Phinney Avenue North will be populated with eclectic furniture and mismatched dishes. The wine list will include 18 to 25 wines, most from Washington. On the small plate menu will be lentil salads, antipasti, bruschetta, and grilled vegetables, there will be shared platters for $8 and mac and cheese for the kids.

The owners are currently in negotiation with Fonte Roasters and Cafe Vita. Whichever coffee company ends up with the account, Folino (who got his barista training at Vivace), says espresso drinks will be priced at about a dollar below average and he’ll give out generous coffee-punch cards: buy five drinks and the sixth is free.

“‘One hundred percent more free coffee’ is one of our mottoes,” he says.

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Tags: Openings, Wine, Phinney Ridge

Sauced

The Latest on Auto Battery

Booze News! A Boutique Gin Distillery Coming to Capitol Hill

In the Red Wine Bar Set to Open on Phinney Avenue

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