Scene: Sip at the Wine Bar

By Kathryn Robinson

Photo: Courtesy Summer Wilson Photography

AND NOW A RESTAURANT designed to please every one of your summertime houseguests. The downtown Seattle version of the sleek wine bar that has captivated the Issaquah Highlands and Gig Harbor, Sip combines the underlit stylishness and pulsing soundtrack—and sumptuous young clientele—of a crammed nightclub with a menu that so delivers on the current obsessions of the almighty taste bud it might have been cooked up by a focus group. It’s all here—sirloin sliders with pepper mayo on sweet Hawaiian bread, rich short ribs with Parmesan-crackling JoJos, chunks of satiny ahi in a poke salad lit with wasabi aioli—and if they’re not all ringing successes, it’s never for want of big, big flavor. Plus there may be no better place to start an evening than the lineup of semiprivate couch-filled “living rooms” along Madison Street, the fishnet flesh of the Seattle Public Library filling the windows.