Tag Archives: mysteries

The Rhino Room ‘temporarily closed’ at 11th and Pine

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(Image: The Rhino Room)

When a Capitol Hill nightlife spot is “temporarily closed” for over a month, the website goes dead, and the ownership go quiet, it might be time for a new adverb.

A year after its 10-year anniversary in Pike/Pine, The Rhino Room hasn’t opened for its typical weekend party schedule and it isn’t clear when the disco ball at 11th and Pine might start spinning again.

Last year, CHS celebrated the tough skin of the club as the venture marked a decade of nightlife having endured the explosive redevelopment of Pike/Pine, the pandemic, and the weeks of CHOP and SPD turmoil in the streets outside the venue in 2020.

Patric Gabre-Kidan, one of the few Black business owners in Capitol Hill’s nightlife scene, kicked off the project in 2013, when a group of friends turned business partners collaborated to build the new hotspot. Continue reading →

HoneyHole’s E Jefferson expansion has been ‘temporarily closed’ for weeks — UPDATE

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(Image: HoneyHole)

At what point is a temporary closure no longer temporary?

The expansion of Capitol Hill’s much loved HoneyHole toasted sandwich joint onto E Jefferson has apparently gone cold. The location just off 12th Ave across from Seattle U’s Championship Field has been closed since at least late January.

A sign went up around that last week of January announcing the temporary closure. Weeks have passed and the space remains dark.

Calls to ownership haven’t been returned and messages to the HoneyHole social media accounts have so far gone unanswered. A check of the city permit paperwork, meanwhile, reveals no clues about any work planned or underway at the location and court records also don’t indicate anything amiss. Continue reading →

Capitol Hill is getting a Ben and Esther’s vegan Jewish deli

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(Image: Ben and Esther’s)

Portland-born vegan Jewish deli chain Ben and Esther’s has aspirations of someday bringing its plant-based corned beef reubens to the East Coast. First, it will add a location on Capitol HIll.

With three delis already in motion — two in Portland, and one in San Diego — the company has announced its next expansion will be to Seattle. Continue reading →

Two ‘mystery’ projects take shape with planned beer-y future in the Central District, new basement restaurant on Capitol Hill

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Construction underway this summer at the Heath Printers building on Capitol Hill (Image: CHS)

Sometimes it’s a secret. Sometimes nobody knows. And sometimes you just haven’t asked the right person.

While the pace of new food and drink openings has understandably slowed, two Capitol Hill and Central District “mystery restaurant” projects continue to take shape. As the industry continues its work at recovery, the projects represent bright — and intriguing — lights on the horizon.

On Capitol Hill, work has been underway for months in a full transformation of the interior of Boylston Ave’s Heath Printers building with a planned change of use to “eating & drinking establishment” and construction of “substantial alterations for tenant improvements of restaurant and office spaces throughout existing commercial structure,” according to plans filed with the city. The property just around the corner off E Pine is part of the near block snapped up by developer Asana Partners and was the home to Capitol Hill-born coworking company Office Nomads before that venture went fully virtual during the pandemic.

Asana has brought on Capitol Hill-based Graham Baba Architects, the prolific firm behind many of the neighborhood and city’s most ambitious recent food and drink construction projects, to design the space. Continue reading →

After only a year of business, Broadway’s Junkichi — and its robot — set to be offline for ‘several months’

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We trust this robot — for now

The skewering of meats, open flame of the grill, and even the cute little robot have gone quiet — and nobody is answering the phones. Broadway’s Junkichi Robata Izakaya will be closed for “several months due to renovations” after only one year of business.

The curt message appeared on the restaurant’s website to start the month as the 200-block Broadway E robata grill concept has gone dark. Company representatives haven’t responded to repeated calls and messages about the closure. Continue reading →

After mystery summer disappearance, Capitol Hill mystery soda machine mysteriously resurfaces

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Now it can be revealed. Capitol Hill’s mystery pop machine is alive and well and apparently sightseeing. And in a sure sign of the impending Capitol Hill apocalypse, it now has PR representation.

The viral soda dispenser  — yum! — missing for months from in front of the Broadway Locksmith resurfaced unexpectedly Monday morning on social media, revealing its temporary location to be near the Space Needle. The pop machine has also apparently hired a graphic design team. Continue reading →

Limoncello Restaurant is ‘opening soon’ on Capitol Hill

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Someday, you won’t have CHS to tell you about Capitol Hill restaurants planning to open 18 months from now. You need to learn to fend for yourself. Here is something to practice on: Limoncello Restaurant.

CHS is pretty good on the comings and goings of Capitol Hill and the nearby and usually we have some idea of a project’s details even if we don’t have enough to report on it.

Limoncello is a mystery. As far as CHS’s reportorial resources reach, we don’t have a clue about where the project is headed. All we have to work with is this March 21st Tweet:

https://twitter.com/LimoncelloR/status/976667825245798400

We reached out last week and got a reply from the account  — “we’re putting together a media Package with all the info,” it said. We haven’t heard more since.

So, welcome to our world, reader. Enjoy the mystery. And good luck with your reporting.

Capitol Hill food+drink | Mystery ‘Rory’s Restaurant and Rooftop Bar’ making plans to rise above E Pine

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We’ve had an early taste of Seattle spring in the days leading up to Valentine’s 2017, how about some chatter about a new restaurant and rooftop bar project being lined up for a classic Pike/Pine building with plans to be open this summer.

Developer Hunters Capital tells CHS it is underway on a seismic overhaul and full rehab of the Colman Automotive building on E Pine at Bellevue that it acquired for $3.85 million in 2012. “Initially we are going to spend 4 to 5 months stripping the building down to its bones, sandblasting, bringing in upgraded utilities and seismically upgrade it for new occupancies,” a Hunters rep tells CHS. Part of those big changes: a restaurant with roof deck component. We asked who is planning to move into this new Pike/Pine creation but that’s where the Capitol Hill development and real estate investment firm gets quiet. Continue reading →

E Pike rumor dot com: Amazon just might be opening a grocery store on Capitol Hill

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It's not very interesting inside... yet (Image: CHS)

It’s not very interesting inside… yet (Image: CHS)

A bookstore in U Village. A drive-up grocery store in Ballard. A checkout-less convenience store on 7th Ave in Amazon-ville. With Amazon’s voice control platform Alexa reportedly “stealing the show” at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the retailing giant has also been busy innovating and testing new concepts in its home city. But, so far, none of its “meatspace” experiments have made a home on Capitol Hill, the neighborhood where many of its employees live.

That might be about to change.

CHS has learned that an Amazon executive central to the rollout of the company’s retail projects including 7th Ave’s Amazon Go checkout-less concept is involved in the giant and highly secretive retail project slated to fill a 10,000 square-foot retail space in the Mercedes Benz dealership-turned AVA Capitol Hill development in the 600 block E Pike.

A development manager for Avalon Communities declined to comment telling CHS he was not allowed to discuss the tenant and Amazon has not replied to inquiries about the project.

The Amazon senior program manager included in City of Seattle filings on the project worked on the University Village Amazon bookstore and the launch team for Amazon Go, according to his Linked In profile. Continue reading →

Why did the Cal Anderson duck pool turn red?

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(Images: Alex Garland for CHS)

(Images: Alex Garland for CHS)

There is a lot of water testing going on around here these days. Seattle Parks officials tell CHS they’re working to figure out why the Cal Anderson reflection pool water has taken on a red hue. If it turned purple this week, there would be no questions. But apparently water testing is needed to figure out what, exactly, is plaguing the duck-friendly pool. “Our crews will take a sample to have the water tested this week,” a spokesperson said. “Once we have results, we will develop a plan to drain, clean and refill the pool.”

While a working reservoir still lurks below Cal Anderson (CHS wrote about it here in 2015 when the facility was due for a cleaning), the reflecting pool next to the pump house is purely for aesthetic. There has been a reservoir at the site for 115 years. After the state mandated that Seattle’s open water sources needed to be covered in the early 1990s, community groups helped lead an effort to cap the reservoir with a park. The ripple pool and water mountain have become an iconic element of the neighborhood. But a murky red pool? Not as much.
Continue reading →