Tag Archives: 19th Ave

Capitol Hill’s Rocket Taco launches plan for big move — across the street

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The old Kingfish will soon need a new tenant

(Image: Rocket Taco)

Rocket Taco is making an important adjustment to its Capitol Hill orbit.

Seven years after touching down on 19th Ave E, the Seattle sibling to the Whidbey Island original is making a big switch from the more than 100-year-old restaurant space where Kingfish Cafe once ruled and leaping ahead 105 years to the empty restaurant in the 2014-built 19th & Mercer “luxury apartments” building across the street.

Owner Steve Rosen confirmed the planned move to the intersection’s southeast corner and said Rocket Taco could not pass up the opportunity to operate in a newer space with a modern kitchen and expansive patio.

Rocket Taco’s new restaurant home was first designed for Linda Derschang and her Tallulah’s venture. Continue reading →

Seattle Parks planning $2M update of Miller Park playground

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(Image: Seattle Parks)

Seattle Parks is starting the long process of shaping a $2 million renovation of the Miller Park playground.

A community meeting will be held Wednesday night to discuss the early planning on the project. Groundbreaking isn’t expected until the spring of 2026.

Seattle Parks is inviting neighbors and interested parties “to meet the design team and share your hopes and dreams for the future play area” at the December 11th meeting.

Parks says the project will replace the existing play equipment, make necessary accessibility improvements, and install synthetic turf safety surfacing in the play area. The equipment will include play structures for children of all abilities ages 2 to 12. Continue reading →

Lord Byron, friend and Capitol Hill explorer, remembered

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Image courtesy Cristi Russo

A map of Lord Byron’s roamings from lordbyron.pet

The King of Cat-paw-tol Hill is dead. A memorial grows at 20th and Denny to mark his passing.

Lord Byron, whose years of exploring and making this corner of the city his own earned the orange tabby a place among neighborhood royalty, was 8.

“The best thing about LB was the way he brought people together,” his family tells CHS about the cat’s passing. “It’s what we ❤️ about Capitol Hill and Seattle.”

“Also, he would want everyone to vote,” they added.

Lord Byron, it is true, often had the community and its snacks and soft couches and excellent chin scratches in mind. And Lord Byron always had an angle. Continue reading →

Named to honor Black history where Capitol Hill and the Central District meet, Seattle finally ready to dig in on Cayton Corner Park

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(Image: CHS)

Seattle finally has the money to build Cayton Corner Park with construction beginning in coming weeks to turn a 4,500-square-foot triangle of land along E Madison at 19th Ave into a new city park at the border of Capitol Hill and the Central District honoring the area’s Black history.

Seattle Parks and Recreation superintendent AP Diaz held a groundbreaking ceremony at the site earlier this week with representatives from the parks department, the Hearing, Speech & Deaf Center and preschool that neighbor the site, and residents from nearby apartment buildings around the wedge of public land across the street from the Mount Zion Baptist Church.

“We look for opportunities anywhere,” Diaz said Monday of the department’s 2011 acquisition of the small but valuable piece of land the park will be built on in the middle of the densely populated and fast-growing neighborhoods around E Madison.

In budget-challenged Seattle, “landbanking” does not pay off quickly. Continue reading →

Chef planning ‘Emilia’ for Capitol Hill’s 19th Ave E

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Chef Green (Image: L’Auberge Del Mar)

Details are mostly under wraps right now but paperwork does reveal a secret or two — including plans for a soft-serve ice cream machine

An empty food and drink space on Capitol HIll’s 19th Ave E is going back into motion with a chef-driven restaurant project featuring a native son of Seattle who made his name in fine dining in a legendary kitchen that burned bright in the Pacific Northwest food and drink scene before fizzling in a cloud of alleged sexual abuse and a toxic work environment.

Permit paperwork shows that construction now underway in the empty space at the southeast corner of 19th and Mercer is for an “Emilia” restaurant project from chef Nick Green.

Green has been leading the kitchen as the executive chef at Adelaide in the L’Auberge Del Mar luxury hotel overlooking the Pacific coast of Southern California.

But his stature as a chef grew on tiny Lummi Island overlooking the Puget Sound in the kitchen at the now-notorious Willows Inn where he was recognized as one of the top sous chefs on the rise in the nation a decade ago. Continue reading →

Bounty Kitchen exits Capitol Hill — UPDATE

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Even a patio like this couldn’t save Bounty Kitchen on Capitol Hill (Image: Bounty Kitchen)

Originally designed as a Linda’s joint, changes in the restaurant space on the southeast corner of 19th and Mercer will continue.

The Capitol Hill location of the Bounty Kitchen is shutting down to make way for a new food and drink project.

Bounty Kitchen customers of the 19th Ave E location are finding out about the closure but the next food and drink venture lined up for the space remains a mystery.

UPDATE: Bounty Kitchen’s final day of service on Capitol Hill will be Saturday, December 23rd.

Born into challenging times, Bounty Kitchen never really took off on Capitol Hill. Continue reading →

Capitol Hill’s St. Joseph School: a century in its school building — and new hopes for a playfield/parking structure

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(Image: St. Joseph School)

The kids at Capitol Hill’s St. Joseph School sometimes probably can’t wait to go home and get out of the place but they joined together recently to mark a big milestone. The school marked the 100 year anniversary of its 18th Ave building by recreating a historical photograph of the student body across the ages.

The school has continued to grow with an expansion to the campus about ten years ago and plans for a new playfield structure in the works.

The photographic celebration came on the 100th anniversary of the school building but a few years short of the present-day church structure’s centennial. They’ll mark that milestone in 2030. Continue reading →

Culinary diplomacy: The Capitol Hill Korean fried chicken trend stretches east with Sodam Chicken coming to 19th and Madison

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CHS truly did once find a City of Seattle construction permit for a food and drink space on Broadway that simply read, “Replace the old Thai restaurant with a new Thai restaurant.”

In the new era of Capitol Hill restaurants, Thai has given way to Korean fried chicken.

Permit paperwork shows the U.S. subsidiary of South Korea’s Sodam Chicken is preparing to open its second stateside location on Capitol Hill after debuting in Shoreline last year.

When the Chicken Factory opened above Broadway and Pike last summer, CHS compared the trend to the proliferation of coffee shops that once dotted the Hill — a Korean chicken shop on every corner. Continue reading →

‘United to stop Russia’: Victory Day protest targets Capitol Hill’s Russian Community Center — UPDATE

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Thanks to CHS reader Ryan for the pictures from Tuesday night

UPDATE: An organizer says the RANDOM group representing pro-democracy Russians in Seattle was also part of the protest

A march and protest targeting the Russian Community Center on Capitol Hill Tuesday night was a reminder that war in Ukraine has now been raging for over a year and that the impacts from the conflict can be felt as far away as 19th Ave E.

“Our rally serves as a powerful reminder of the immense sacrifices made during World War II and the ongoing conflicts, such as the one in Ukraine,” the event posting promoted by the Ukrainian Association of Washington State read. “We gather to honor the memories of those who bravely fought against the horrors of Nazism, which inflicted tremendous pain and suffering upon the world. Today, Ukraine finds itself battling against Russia, a nation driven by imperialistic ambitions reminiscent of Hitler’s Nazism and Stalinism, but now manifested in a modern form—rusсism.”

UPDATE 5/15/2023: A representative for the Russian Action Network– RANDOM, an organization of pro-democracy Russians in Seattle, tells CHS the group was also part of the protest. Agata Ianturina says the group had been targeting the Victory Day party on May 9th but also screenings of “Soviet films related to WWII” that were being shown at the center.

Continue reading →

The Interlaken sinkhole is growing — and nobody knows why — UPDATE

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Thanks to @GordonOfSeattle for the picture

A hole appeared recently in the pavement at the intersection of E Galer and 19th Ave E above Interlaken Park — and nobody is 100% sure why. Meanwhile, a ring of orange safety cones hasn’t contained the modest but gaping maw which continues to grow and crumble the pavement, ever so slightly.

The Seattle Department of Transportation said Thursday city crews were “continuing to work to assess this damage and determine the best repair plan.” Seattle Public Utilities is assisting in the repair effort “by testing the water to verify that it is not connected to their underground pipes,” SDOT said. Continue reading →