After The Belltown, we were headed home, but Brandon wanted to know if we should hit another bar. There was this place he had seen, which was on the north end of Western, before it headed around Queen Anne Hill. Or he thought there was, at least.

Surprise, surprise, we were game for another bar.

So we came to Barocho. It was kind of late, so that when we discovered there was indeed a bar where Brandon thought it was, there were only about half a dozen people in it. It's a Latin bar, and as near as I can tell, everyone there was speaking Spanish except us. Sean knows a little, so he got by, but Brandon and I just sat there in ignorance. Which didn't make it a bad experience.

They had a sign indicating a claim for the best Lemon Drops in Seattle. So Brandon ordered one, and I just had a well drink. The bartender was quick with the drinks, and I must admit, it was a damn fine Lemon Drop. No sugar on the rim, which was a negative, but even without, it was excellent. The menu for food looked good, and better still, there was a nook by the front that was filled with a massive red leatherette couch, more of a daybed almost, which was so comfortable that it was an effort of will to depart it. There was a little quality TV in the nook, and more seating, so it would be a great place for a group of half a dozen to take over and drink in.

The bathroom had a weird sink that was a silver basin on a marble slab that projected from the wall, with a long necked faucet hanging perilously high above it. Very odd to look at, but kind of pretty.

Good marks for the Lemon Drop and the couch, making Barocho a spot to stop at.

Sometimes I like a place, even if it tries too hard. And sometimes, I like a place until it tries too hard. That place, in this case, was the World Beat Cafe.

It was a rainy night in December when Brandon and I came to the bar, a new one I had just read about in the paper that day. It was part of a night of three that we had planned, and so we walked in completely fresh and ready for anything.

Inside, there was a little restaurant portion to the right, and the bar on the left, with a couple of small tables and the bar itself, and a little sub-bar with four seats that we ended up sitting at. The bartender called out that he'd be with us in a moment, and we took that moment to look over the drink menu. Now that we go out less often, we get a lot more specialty drinks, which isn't, I suppose, fair to bars we just got wells in, but then again, a lot of the specialty drinks are really, really underwhelming.

In this case, I got a hot cider-like thing, with whipped cream and tasty goodness. And Brandon was talked into a gin martini sort of thing, with midori, that he didn't like much. Or really, at all, although he didn't hate it. I thought it was tasty, but what do I know?

We also had a meatball sort of appetizer, which was decent, and had a rather good dipping sauce.

How did it try too hard? First, the bartender was all suggestions, which I suppose was alright for having come around the bar to the little sub-bar. A little attention is a good thing. But then, he kept coming back to see if we were good with our drinks, and when it was obvious that Brandon wasn't, he kept talking it up anyway. Saying that it was really popular, that he really liked it, etc, etc. Well, that's all to the good, I guess, but if the customer doesn't like it, it doesn't help to talk it up. And I mean he kept checking up. He was out to see us three or four times, to ask how the food was, how the drink was, how everything was.

So I think I'd like it better if it were busy, so that the bartender were busy. Which he wasn't, not nearly enough.

Oh, well. It's decent looking inside, the drinks were pretty good, the happy hour wasn't so much, the food was okay, and the service was over the top. Nice, but not great. Maybe if they tone it down a little, it'll be worth a visit, but not just yet.

Having managed to place all the other bars, I realized I still hadn't placed or reviewed the second Mojito, even though it's notably more than a year old.

So anyway, here's my review.

It's not the old Mojito, that delightful little place off Lake City Way. Instead, it's the Mojito made in every way grand, bigger, louder, fancier, more popular. It was packed the night we went, so that we barely managed to get seats on the conga drums that serve as bar stools, and it took a while to get our nearly perfect Mojitos. There's a lot of bright color, a lot of bits of polished tile, and a lot of fun. Or at least there was a long while when I was there, and I'm told there still is.

There's dancing some nights, when they stack up tables in the front seating area, by the windows. There's a bigger menu, a bigger bar and many more people than the old Mojito. But the Mojitos are still the same, and that's what matters.

Okay, it's late, and it's short, but that's what I've got.

Just across the rainy street from World Beat Cafe was a near opposite bar. Where WBC was new, it was lived in. Where WBC was obsequious, it was casual. And where WBC was obviously trying to be something, the Ravenna Pub was just being.

It was pretty dark inside, because there was minimal lighting, and there were a lot of tables that didn't have many people at them. A few sat around the edges, drinking and talking, and there were a couple people at the bar. We went there and were served with alacrity by the bartender, who was attentive for a moment, and then moved on to talk with a friend at the bar, and then took more orders from a couple young women who came up.

Curiously enough, I got flirted with by one of the ladies, who gave me eyes. It was flattering, although odd.

The drinks were decent in flavor, strong on the booze end and not too pricey. The bar was that sort of comfortable neighborhood place that everyone should find, and which Ballard has a few of up on 65th, notably the Tin Hat. I rather liked the vibe of the Ravenna Pub, and it's the place I'd hit if I were in the area.

Named after Teddy Roosevelt, and located in Roosevelt, this used to be just a beer/wine place that I visited a few times with people from work. But a while ago they got their liquor license, and now it's a happening place. Before, there would be tables with people hanging out, and a few guys at the bar, but it wouldn't be too crazy. Now, or at least on the night we were there, after hitting two other bars, there was a mass of people. The tables were all full, the pool table with surrounded, the bar was packed, and there were people piled up behind the bar waiting to order.

So we joined the mass, and eventually got drinks. Which were four dollar sorts, and worth it, in that they weren't bad, but nothing remarkable, either. We stood by a pillar where there was enough space for two people, because there were no seats at all, and very little other room, and even though the pillar was kind of in the middle of things, that was the only option. We kept having to step aside to let people by.

We drank up quick, looked for someplace to ditch our glasses and eventually plopped them down on the bar by reaching over various shoulders, and we were out of there. Too much crowd. I guess getting liquor made them a hot spot. Too hot, as it turned out.

Probably fun if you get there in time for a table, but too much for me.

It was strange and yet so very familiar, as I waited in front of the bookstore for Brandon to pull up, and there was Bridgit in the passenger seat. Deja vu, really. And I sat, and we all said hi, and off we went, looking for bars. Bridgit had one she wanted to hit, but there was another I suggested, along the way, which was Voila!, and so that was the first we went to. Along the way, we shared a delightful apple, and drove through the dark Arboretum, and then we were down by Madison Park, and had found our way to the bar. The apple was finished on the street, and as there was no garbage can, we were forced to leave it to fertilize a shrub.

It used to be Gitano, and before that Gypsy (which is just Gitano in a different language, but it was a totally different place) and something else long before that. Now it was Voila!, opened by the same people who had run Figaro Bistro. The space hasn't changed much since Gitano, although there was new paint, and the bar was a little different. It seemed more open, as well, but that might just be false memory, because it's a small space, and it can't be that open anyway.

We sat right at the bar, because there was room for us there and not really anywhere else. The place, although small, was rather full, and the waitstaff was hustling to keep up. As a result they only said hello, and that they would be with us in a moment, and then bustled off. There was a lot of that, as we sat, and the staff hurried to this and that, and we chatted, before we got helped. While normally this might count against them, they had two things going for them, which were that we could see they were really busy, and that we all wanted, I think, to catch up. So we had our chat, and didn't mind at all about the slow service.

I got a vodka tonic, while there was wine for the others (I think...I may be confusing this with the next bar, or there may have been wine at both, which is, I think, the accurate case). We drank and chatted some more, about the bar, about Bridgit and cooking school and marriage and New Orleans and so on, and about nothing in particular as well, which is really why Bridgit was always one of our favorites to go out with, because it was so easily possible to just chat forever with her.

Voila! was nice, a good place to hang out if you weren't in a hurry, and the food was probably rather good, but we didn't get any, because we were saving ourselves for the next bar. I think I might have liked Gitano better, but there's no use crying over lost bars, and Voila! is certainly good enough to visit.

After a time, we were ready to go, because we had another bar to hit, but the staff was still busy, so getting the check took some while. But it was eventually obtained, and then we headed out into the night again, on our way up to Capitol Hill, and the new restaurant/bar Via Tribunali, which will be, if you're clever, your summer lunch spot of choice.

We parked not very far at all from this new bar, just around the corner, which location would turn out later to be rather fortunate. The front of Via Tribunali doesn't look like much--you would think it was the multi-paned glass door of a garage, able to raise and lower with ease, and you'd be right. The space used to house a repair show, some time ago, and the door is still there. Just inside the door is a room of sorts, beyond which is the real wall of Via T. In the summer, the door will likely always be open, and there will be half a dozen tables right out at streetside, which is why I say this will be your summer lunch place is you're clever.

Inside, it's narrow, because it's just a storefront wide. There are tables, the big bar and more tables behind. At the end of the bar, on the bartender side, is the wood-fired pizza oven, so it's warm to sit there, even in the chill of winter. The place was packed again with people, Thursday apparently being a busy night at everyplace we went to. The bartender was friendly, the staff was attractive in a tattoos and piercings way, the crowd was lively and busily stuffing their faces, and all was good.

We crammed in at the actual bar, asking kindly people to scoot down one seat, which they gladly did. People tell me all the time, or rather, I overhear them commenting to each other more often, that Seattle is painfully unfriendly city. Which may be true, but damn we're polite. So there were three seats exactly between the waitress station and the kindly folks, and we sat and looked over a menu while ordering drinks. Again, I was a tonic guy, while Brandon and Bridgit availed themselves of a delightful wine menu. We ordered a meat and cheese assortment, not huge but filled with delightful options, as well as a very thin crust pizza full of goodness. Bridgit is eating meat again, as opposed to her earlier appearances on this site, so she set too with gusto, and everything was quite good, the food, the drink, the wine, the environment. I still like the pizza at La Vita e Bella better, but this was a close second.

By this time, we had recieved our invites to Bridgit's wedding reception. We had all agreed that it was like no time at all had passed since last we had hung out, and as soon as this became clear, we were invited. We had all thought there might be some awkwardness--it had been a long while, and things had been odd for a time--but nothing of the sort. And so we got to look forward to a delightful evening at Campagne, which I've already mentioned elsewhere.

The food being done, the drinks being dry, we decided to move on, and thought that maybe one more bar would be good. But before we made that trip, we rounded the corner back toward the car, and there was Frites, which I've also already talked about, but which was, in every way, a complete delight. Bridgit was planning to go here again, if she could manage it, before departing for New Orleans; I didn't hear if that happened, but I like to think it did.

Via T (as I'm now going to call it full time, because I keep stumbling over the full name) was a delight as well, and in the summer, I intend to find my way to the al fresco seating, and enjoy it often. If I can beat the crowds that will surely be there.

And our third bar was this, the Six Arms. They were once just a tavern, only possessed of wine and beer, but have since, as with so many other places, made the leap to a full bar. Part of the McMennamin's chain of Northwest Eateries, the Six Arms was perhaps the weakest spot of the night. No, wait, not perhaps.

Again, there was a crowd, though as the Six Arms is rather large, it wasn't as packed. Again, we sat at the bar, Bridgit and I leaving a seat for Brandon who was parking the car. I ordered a Bloody Mary, because I felt like it, and regretted this order very shortly. I had taken but a sip by the time Brandon arrived, and then I declared it was perhaps the worst Bloody Mary I'd ever had, and I've had some bad ones. Bridgit took a sip, and agreed at once, and even Brandon, who doesn't like Bloody Marys to begin with, sampled it and declared it awful. So I replaced it with a vodka tonic, and we mentioned that they might want to think about their Bloody Mary mix, and they did nothing about it, but at least I got a better drink out of the deal.

There was a bowl of fruit with a big sign over it saying, "Don't touch the fruit," which of course meant I wanted to, and that Brandon most certainly would touch it, and he did. I applaud him, really, even though at the time, I told him to stop.

We drank, and the only thing I found myself liking about the bar was the fact that the partition between the bar and the restaurant was made of plumbing pipes, of various sorts and looks, laid out on a diagonal within the rectangular outlines, and quite neat. There were faucets in among the piping, and various other accessories, and all in all it was a good partition.

For the rest, I really don't like McMenamin's bars, and this place was no exception. So I won't really go again, although perhaps you might. But I don't recommend it.

And that was our night with Bridgit, which was lovely, and I wish you all the best in New Orleans. I hope you read this.

From the people who brought us the Jitterbug, the Five Spot, Endolyne Joe's (which we haven't been to even though it's more than a year old) and Brandon's least favorite place of all time, Atlas Foods, comes their newest establishment, the Hi Life. Located in the husk of what was once the Ballard Firehouse, a bar I don't miss at all, it's a vast improvement.

The big empty space has now been converted, with restaurant sitting pretty to the left and the cozy bar to the right. Beyond the bar was a large room that had more tables, and I wasn't certain, and I'm still not, whether it was bar seating, or just another space for diners. You didn't have to go through the bar, not really, to get to it, but if you just casually looked, it would totally seem to be an annex to the bar. Who can say?

We sat at the bar, at the end of it close to this annex that perplexed me, and ordered some drinks. We got a bar menu, and then a moment later got our drinks, and then, well, we thought about ordering food. But sadly, for a bit, thinking about it was all we could do. One of the bartenders had just left (gotten off shift, I presume) which left only one woman to boldly hold down the fort, and she was restocking her area and not noticing when we, way at the end, tried to flag her down. Over and over. But a few minutes later, she was there, we ordered a pizza, and it came in like five minutes, so I suppose the haste of the food made up for the slowness of the service. Total wait time was about what it might have been at another bar, I mean.

The drinks were tasty. Not great, but certainly decent for wells. And the price wasn't high, for which I'm happy. The pizza was good, about the same as the recent Via T. experience, although Brandon seemed to like it more. Not the best value, but the crust was made with a special flour, so the bartender told us, and it did have an odd crispiness, not quite crisp enough for a thin crust experience, but more interesting. I know that doesn't make much sense, but go there and try it and it might be more clear. It was odd, but not bad.

Even though it only opened a little while ago, I got the feeling that there were already regulars hanging out at the bar. Which, Ballard being the drinking area that I know it is, shouldn't surprise me at all.

Pretty decent, over all. I still like the Jitterbug better among their places that I've been to, but the Hi Life doesn't shame them at all.

It's funny how things change over the long course of time that I've been at this. Once, a long time, like say in my first hundred bars, I would have really liked the Fox Sports Grill (FSG). But now, I think it's kind of a pit of despair. Located in the hollowed out corpse of Planet Hollywood, FSG was not really at all what we thought it would be. I had pictured a place with a lot of wood, a whole lot of TVs, lots of sports memorabilia and that sort of thing. Oh, and high end pool tables, dart machines, a few Golden Tee games.

Not like that at all.

Instead, you enter on the main floor, from street level, into a smallish room with a few empty tables, obviously meant for the lunch crowd. There's a rather large hostess counter, also abandoned, and in fact it's a little creepy, everything made up as if there should be something there, but there isn't. The creepiness is much disarmed by the sound coming from below--there's an open gallery looking down on the entry of the actual bar, which is beneath street level, and the volume of sound, in the cocktail party chatter and laughter range, was quite high. We descended the stairs, to see another large dining room to the side which was also essentially empty, and then there it was in front of us, the bar.

It was big, and it was packed. Not that there weren't seats, just that it seemed as if everyone had pushed up against the actual bar, a massive structure in the center of the room with an upside down pyramid suspended over it. The waitresses were wearing sports jerseys, and there were a lot of TVs and one pool table, but otherwise it was not at all what I had expected. The crowd was business casual, and I suspect it's a lot of people from neighboring hotels looking for a more exciting stop than the lobby bar. FSG, however, has coopted hotel bar furnishings, so while more exciting, it will still be familiar for the traveler. There was a lot of standing, talking, chattering, desperately making moves going on here, not least in the side lounge we ended up in, where there were large couches and chairs of the hotel style, and a group of five to one side and three to the other. Young, awkward, looking to get drunk and/or know one another, these were the sorts of people you don't expect to see a bar full of in Seattle, at least in a place with no cover. But here they were.

There was loud music, as well. Hits from the eighties, mainly, and this was one of the things that made me think least of the bar. Not the hits themselves, no, but the fact that, when Bobby Brown's "Tender Roni" came on, many people, many people, sang along with the chorus. I don't know why that bothered me so much, but everyone I've talked to about it got the same feeling, that there was just something very wrong about it, so I'll stand with that opinion.

Anyway, the drinks were fine, not horribly priced, not terribly tasty, strong enough. The space was big and varied, and really far better than it should have been. People looked like they were having fun, quite a lot, and even singing a
Bobby Brown song supports that notion. So why didn't I like it?

Well, I think it was the undertone of desperation that ran through the whole place. These were people trying far too hard to have a good time. Maybe they were succeeding, but it was still forced, or seemed that way to me. And the atmosphere was totally fake, right down to the hotel furniture in a non-hotel bar. In the first part of the quest, I wouldn't have noticed any of that--"Tender Roni" might still have gotten to me, but hey, it's Bobby Brown, so what can you expect? But now, I can see what kind of a bar it is, and I don't like it.

But if you don't go to as many bars as me (and you don't) and you have a sort of business casual, I-just-got-off-work feel to you, then hit the FSG and you'll proabably like it. It may be, for a while, your favorite bar. But I'll bet that it won't last in that spot. It's not the kind of place you can fall in love with, just the sort of place you can spend a few nights with. Like much of the crowd, in regards to one another, I suspect.

Anyway, I'm not heading back, but it works for some, I guess.