(Image: Koko’s Restaurant)

A restaurant and tequila bar that has grown into one of the state’s best dining experiences despite its far-flung location in the planned Olympic Peninsula community of Seabrook, Washington is bringing its “homemade, modern Latin cuisine” to 10th Ave.

Koko’s Restaurant is making plans for the former Heritage Distilling Capitol Hill tasting room that closed shop during the pandemic never to reopen.

The ahi tostadas (Image: Koko’s Restaurant)

“Owners and partners Gibran Moreno Ventura and Alexi Torres combine their roots in Veracruz and El Salvador for a menu of fried plantains, poblano-cashew enchiladas, and fresh, straightforward tacos,” the Seattle Met wrote in highlighting the Seabrook-born restaurant on its roster of Best Restaurants in Washington State.

Bringing Koko’s to Seattle will be a return for Ventura who previously was part of the kitchen at the Cactus chain of Seattle Mexican joints.

Capitol Hill is a long way from Seabrook (Image: Koko’s Restaurant)

It will also be a spark on this backside of Pike/Pine where the Heritage exit in late 2020 has left the Central Agency building with a hole at its center. Koko’s will soon neighbor fellow building tenants Lark and Slab Sandwiches. The respected restaurant and its sandwich-y sibling survived the depths of the pandemic in the home Lark moved into at 10th and Seneca in 2014. Lark is nearing its 20th anniversary this year. Meanwhile, the Lark-spawned pizza joint in its previous 12th Ave location has been rebooted as Cora Pizza and Plates.

Only five years since the tasting room was first built out, the space next door won’t need major changes for Koko’s with early permitting showing plans for a cosmetic overhaul and the addition of a service bar.

It should be a good home for Koko’s to grow even though compared to Seabrook’s “new urbanism planning,” any plan on Capitol Hill feels just a little bit more chaotic.

Koko’s Restaurant is planned to open 1201 10th Ave. Learn more at kokos-restaurant.com.

HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.

Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.