Mezcaleria Oaxaca Capitol Hill preview party (Image: @checkereddan via Twitter)

It’s opening season in Capitol Hill food and drink with a small wave of 2014’s roster of rated rookies making their major league debuts.

• Mezcaleria Oaxaca Capitol Hill: A transformation of Capitol Hill’s most recent auto row past, the sister to the Queen Anne location and cousin to Ballard’s La Carta de Oaxaca held a private preview party Monday night that steamed up the windows of the completely overhauled former auto garage at E Pine and Summit. The pretty amazing new restaurant opens Friday. UPDATE: With permits in place and inspections wrapped, the MO team is ready early and is open for service as of Tuesday night. Enjoy!

  CHS wrote about the Graham Baba-designed project here in spring 2013. Arriving nearly six months later than originally planned, the enormous 3,000 square-foot restaurant also features a space for rooftop dining — and will offer more mezcales than you’ll know what to do with. It will also be the second Oaxacan-focused Mexican restaurant in two blocks following the opening of the more modest La Cocina Oaxaquena last spring at Pine and Melrose. Meanwhile, a short, one-block walk up the Hill — past World of Beers – delivers the hungry traveler to El Fogon. For more on Mezcaleria Oaxaca Capitol Hill, check out facebook.com/mezcaleriaoaxaca.

• The Rhino Room: As the early 20th century building the project calls home is readied for redevelopment in the coming years, the Big Fun project being built out in a former street-level bike shop has a name — and plans to open any day now. CHS introduced you to Patric Gabre-Kidan and his gang of “five pros building Big Fun at 11th and Pine” last September. Now, thanks to a giant plastic animal statue, the “no concept” bar has an identity. The Rhino Room will boast lots of canned beer and single-serving bubbly. It also turned out fancier than expected, reports Seattle Met:
  The plan was an unfussy hangout space, but this group has a lot of design and build knowhow, and Gabre-Kidan allows that the end result, with its brown leather booths, mirrored support posts, glossy black trim, and a U-shaped resin-topped bar “turned out a little fancier than we were hoping for.” 
  That’s what happens when talented youth work together for the common good. Gabre-Kidan, who also helped build out Broadway’s latest drink spot (below), will remain busy in the neighborhood. We found his name on another nearby Pike/Pine project. More on that soon.
  

  More Nacho Borracho pictures here

  You can’t find any information about The Rhino Room online yet but you can stop by and look through the windows at 11th and Pine for the apparently anatomically correct rhino. If the rhino winks at you, The Rhino Room is open.

• Nacho Borracho: The slushie machines go round and round. CHS gave you this first look inside the latest neighborhood bar project from Rachel Marshall and Kate Opatz. Have you visited yet?

Capitol Hill food+drink notes

• Now open inside R Place: Sandwich provider Panini Boys, a first-time food and drink project from Eric Gelbart and Floyd Lovelady. Serves 4 to 11p on weeknights, 2-11p on Saturdays and Sundays. More info here via Facebook.
• Chop Suey’s new Twin Dragon Lounge — and bitchin’ black light mural — is open.
• The overhaul of the Comet is nearing completion.
  

  The Comet via Facebook

• The vegan kitchen has reopened at the Highline.
• Also reopened: the former location of the Montlake Alehouse. CHS told you about the plans for Traveler Montlake here.
• Capitol Cider’s Drink and Draw = models + art supplies + cider
• ICYMI: U:Don Noodle is coming to 12th Ave.
• Fresh off their Chico Madrid partnership, Team Marination is opening a bar in Pioneer Square.
• Green Lake Bauhaus?
• Meanwhile, Broadcast Coffee is opening in Roosevelt.
• 2014 NW Regional Barista Champion is Laila Ghambari — her dad Ali owns the Cherry Street Coffee chain.
• “This most recent possible price hike stems from the Liquor Control Board deciding in November that discounted volume sales of booze from distributors to bars and restaurants wasn’t OK under the new law.”
• What you’re missing at 10th Ave E’s Abay Ethiopian:
• Canon is closed until Friday, revamping its food menu — and touring Kentucky distilleries.
• The Wandering Goose B.O.L.T. — Bacon, Oyster, Lettuce, Tomato — recipe on Bon Appetit.
• Plum’s Makini Howell doing the national TV thing on CBS’s The Talk.