the worst place to find a restaurant

[shannonac]

There's a new space available in Columbia City right next to Jones' Barbecue. It used to be a church, but they've got a sign saying it's available for lease for commercial or restaurant space. Columbia City restaurants appear to be doing well - and we've got the Columbia City Bakery coming in this summer!

[JasonTrue]

5 miles from Blue Onion would preclude almost anything on the north end save maybe Shoreline, which is a shame considering Ballard's low rents and ability to pack people in, and Phinney's character.

Most of Queen Anne would still be ok, and Columbia City, Georgetown, Beacon Hill, and presumably the Central Area, so there's a fair range of possibilities there. Personally, given that list, I'd put my money on Columbia City, where people are primed for interesting food already.

On the other hand, Queen Anne has a lot of captive audience restaurants so if you even went a smidge higher quality than what most of the restaurants there you'd probably get pretty reliable traffic. The rents or real estate costs might be prohibitive... but being on Queen Anne means very small promotional expenses would be required to build an audience.

In Columbia City you could get good publicity by working with their local community organizations; they have the cozy "common donation" music events shared between several restaurants and the gallery, and so on.

Beacon Hill is still missing community support to build a vibrant restaurant scene, so someone with a lot of community ties or a long-range timeframe (and suitably deep pockets) would have to do it. I still think that if someone did something just a little exciting there, it would get all of the Amazon.com crowd and then build from there.

Beacon Hill needs the kind of approach that Ballard had: Try something a little interesting like a upgraded pastry shop, kitschy but edgy attitude pizza place, then move into Thai noodles with better than average decor, add a quirky bar or two with a more lounge-like feel than the indigenous pubs, then do some better-than-average Mexican. Eventually the high end Italian or French will fit right in.

For Beacon Hill, the ideal path would probably be: do a Hong Kong-style or Japanese-style bakery with a nice interior and better-than-average coffee and tea, add a place that does take-out and eat-in Chinese dumplings and baozi for a moderate price but better than average ingredients and no fluorescent lighting or vinyl booths, throw in a hip Thai or Vietnamese place, add a cozy after-work lounge for Amazon-land employees, experiment with a casual Italian place with someone who got really obsessed with making handmade noodles and spent a year or two apprenticing with someone in Italy, create a place for "New American Tapas" or somesuch. That would be about serving the younger generations of the built-in demographic and appealing to the new residents. After a base of such restaurants established themselves, anything could happen.

[pupcart]

There's a new space available in Columbia City right next to Jones' Barbecue.  It used to be a church, but they've got a sign saying it's available for lease for commercial or restaurant space.  Columbia City restaurants appear to be doing well - and we've got the Columbia City Bakery coming in this summer!

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Yes! It fits the bill in several ways:

1) It is outside the 5 mile radius

2) It is close to Seward Park, Beacon Hill, Rainier Beach and Mt. Baker (and all of these neighborhoods BADLY need a good place to dine)

3) In the summer you would have bountiful produce across the street at the Columbia City Farmer's market every Wednesday.

4) I will bring you flowers from my garden to put on your tables.

5) And if there weren't enough clientele already, there are new condo's being constructed a half block away on 39th....

By the way, the new Columbia City Bakery is selling at the aforementioned Farmer's Market, and the mixed seeded baguette is killer. Fennel seed is in the mix and it gives the bread a little licorice pop that is quite tasty.

All in favor say "Red Rover Red Rover, send Chef-Wannabe-Bum right over!"

[elswinger]

If you are really limited to being no closer than five miles from the Blue Onion Bistro on Roosevelt, I am afraid your options are limited to south of Yesler or North of Shoreline. Five miles West looks like it's in Puget Sound (may I suggest a Riverboat).

Edited July 15, 2005 by elswinger (log)

[ScorchedPalate]

There's a new space available in Columbia City right next to Jones' Barbecue.  It used to be a church, but they've got a sign saying it's available for lease for commercial or restaurant space. 

Oh, man... a good restaurant in an old church. That has so many possibilities: You could call it St. Bacon's, and of course missing sunday morning services would be a sin.

~A

[Eden]

There's a new space available in Columbia City right next to Jones' Barbecue.   It used to be a church, but they've got a sign saying it's available for lease for commercial or restaurant space. 

Oh, man... a good restaurant in an old church. That has so many possibilities: You could call it St. Bacon's, and of course missing sunday morning services would be a sin.

~A

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The theme possibilities here are immense.

We went to a pizzeria in Verona this spring that was in a converted old church. we can't recall the real name because we just kept referring to it as "God's own pizza"

[elswinger]

That sounds like an excellent idea. You could do so much with the decor. What kind of church was it? Does it have stained glass or an organ?

[dandelion]

The <a href="http://www.thechapelbar.com/" target="_blank">Chapel Bar</a> on Capitol Hill has done some pretty amazing things with this theme, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be done again in a different part of town. Perhaps in a less solemn way, which could work really well in Columbia City.

[shannonac]

Well, we all might be over-estimating the church concept in this particular situation. This isn't exactly a quaint church...it's this building with a plain white front and a big glass-block-ish cross embedded in the front of the building. From the outside, it's got nothing like the cool factor of Chapel. Maybe the inside is cool, though...I haven't seen it.