• Kelly O

As of tomorrow at closing time, the neon lights at Ninth and Madison will be no more. After 34 years and some health troubles, the owner of Greek-American 1st Hill Bar and Grill has decided to sell. Marti Jonjak’s Happiest Hour love note doubles as an elegy for one of the last truly old-school Seattle restaurant-and-lounges:

The 1st Hill Bar & Grill is a deeply charming dive that's been around forever. Occupying the front space: a pleasant, ordinary diner with old men and mauve seashell-print upholstery and garlands of plastic ivy. But the back lounge blooms into a distinct and unexpected realm—vast and still, with glossy orange underlights and murals on every wall depicting famous Greek ruins.

Come say your goodbyes!

There's a silver lining to this story: The buyer is Ridgley Kuang, owner of the two Green Leaf locations—one serves the best Vietnamese food in Belltown (no contest) and the other serves arguably the best Vietnamese in the International District (we can fight about it in the comments). I go to the Belltown Green Leaf so often that the waitresses know how I like my iced coffee and sometimes send over free dessert.

Kuang isn’t opening another Green Leaf; he thinks two is enough. The new restaurant will be called Lotus Asian Kitchen and Lounge, following a few months of remodeling. Some Green Leaf dishes might migrate, but the menu will have more of an experimental, Asian-fusion vibe, plus a full bar.

And if you find yourself wandering First Hill, in need in of old-fashioned, homey ambience and cheap, serviceable souvlaki, there’s always Mediterranean Kitchen.

• Kelly O
• This is where the as-yet-unnamed bar will be.

Posted by Chow intern Kim Fu.

Liberty owner Andrew Friedman is opening a new bar. He gave us the details.

Where: 1720 East Olive Way, at the corner of Olive and Harvard, in the space in the house that for years was Online Coffee (then, briefly, Online Cafe). Friedman says, "Yeah, they really stretched when they named that one."

Name: No name yet. "Naming a bar is kind of like naming a baby. You have one chance to do it right." (Friedman's own brand-new baby girl is named Bowie Friedman.)

The concept/space: "It’s going to be as if you’re just going to your friend’s house and having a drink. Or your friend who lives in a really nice place, because none of us live in nice places. Not design-heavy—you just walk in and you’re like, 'Wow, this is cool.' Instead of like every other bar—mine included—having tables, [where] you walk in and you know you’re in a bar, you just come in, hang out, and drink at someone’s house. A lot of couches, very comfortable, that kind of thing."

"It’s just a naturally great space... You walk in and you feel great."

The capacity will be 60-ish people, with a 15-seat bar, which Friedman admits is not like your friend's place, but, he says: "We love being bartenders. We love being able to make drinks for people and stand behind the bar." They're also going to pre-batch specialty drinks instead of doing one-by-one craft cocktails: "You can make a really great drink without taking the time to make a six-ingredient drink every time." Of course, you'll still be able to order whatever cocktail you want, too. And they'll be expanding the deck into an all-season patio.

When: "It should not take a long time, because there’s not a terrific amount to do—it’s just that you never know how long the city takes to give us our permits—because we’re doing everything legally. A novel concept for a lot of bars. So if it’s open in two months, we’d be stoked."

Food: "It’s not going to be a chef-centric type of food. It’s going to be light, really tasty, really good, and very satisfying, but it’s not going to be a deep menu." He has no idea who will be in the kitchen yet—it's not a secret, they just don't have a chef yet.

On juggling a newborn baby and a new business: "You just make it work. Life puts stuff in front of you, and you just kind of hold it in, keep moving forward. The baby has no idea what’s going on. She’s not contributing much to the design process." Meanwhile, the opening process is going "smooth as the bottom of a newborn baby."

Why now: He was a consultant for the previous owner, and they kept in touch. "And one day he called and said, 'Hey man, you want this space? I don’t want to do it.' And I was more than happy to say yes."

• Kelly O

What else: They have free Cheetos! Not the standard crunches, but the swollen variety whose forms resemble the spongy black snakes that spritz up from certain firework tablets. Justin hypothesizes that this is how Cheetos harvests the puffs—that, following ignition, "they form long tubes that are cut into segments."

Happy hours: Daily 5–8 pm.

Happy-hour drink specials: $1 off most everything, from whiskey (including fancy-schmancy $11 Hudson Manhattan Rye, $7 Eagle Rare bourbon) to cocktails (the $9 Rootbeer Float has Art in the Age ROOT liqueur, Oola vodka, cream); also $3 wells, $2 off drafts from 5–6 pm (that means $1 Olympia!), and from 6–8 pm, $1 off selected drafts like Lagunitas Pils and Schooner Exact King Street Brown Ale.

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For a long time, the suit of armor that greets you upon entering the Canterbury had a sign hung around its neck that said "Seat Thyself." The Canterbury—going on four decades old—is the world's best ye-olde-English-pub-themed dive bar, complete with dark wood beams, a fireplace, pool tables, shuffleboard, cheap liquor, and fried foods (as well as delicious soups made by the amazing Janice of Calamity Jane’s in Georgetown). As Charles Mudede has pointed out, the Canterbury is perfectly situated, almost equidistant from Group Health hospital and the Volunteer Park cemetery; this is how we should spend the long, cold days between infancy and death—sitting by a fire, drinking.

We love the Canterbury.

Capitol Hill Housing owns the building housing the Canterbury and the Fredonia apartments. (In case you're unfamiliar with CHH, here's some information on its mission: "Founded in 1976 as an outgrowth of community action, CHH currently owns and operates 44 buildings, providing safe and affordable housing to low- and moderate-income individuals and families in Capitol Hill and nine other Seattle area neighborhoods... We are committed to creating equitable and sustainable communities in central Seattle... We envision a diverse community that includes housing for individuals and families across a broad range of incomes.")

The Canterbury's lease is up at the end of the year, and CHH is not renewing the lease. CHH does not comment on lease issues with tenants.

Asked why the Canterbury's lease is not being renewed, Canterbury owner Stefanie Roberge admitted that the business has been late with its rent for the last five months and that there is a "cash-flow problem." She said, "They [CHH] wanted me to sign something that they were not responsible for me breaking my arm, and I wouldn’t say that they weren’t responsible for that, so they refused to sign off on the line of credit that we had had previously from our bank. They refused to sign off on it." Asked about the broken arm, Roberge said that "They [CHH] let the sidewalk get to the point where there was a hole about three inches deep. I twisted my ankle and fell and broke my arm and got a concussion," about three years ago. She said that CHH has a $50,000 lien on her home from when she bought the business 13 years ago, and that when she refused to sign something indicating she would not hold CHH responsible for her medical bills from the broken arm, CHH "exacerbated" the business' cash-flow problem by "not allowing us to get that line of credit again." (UPDATE: CHH has no comment.)

Roberge said she was about to write a check for this month's rent today. "It’s just so convoluted," she said. "What I really want to do is retire at the end of the year and sell the business to somebody—I want to sell the Canterbury to somebody else who wants to open a restaurant. But they [CHH] won’t let me do that." Why? "Because they hate us."

While CHH will not comment on pending lease issues with tenants, Capitol Hill Housing Foundation executive director Michael Seiwerath will say that despite rumors to the contrary, CHH is not moving its offices into the Canterbury space—CHH's offices will be relocating into the new 12th Avenue Arts building upon its completion.

Regarding the Canterbury space, Seiwerath also said, "There's a possibility that it will remain a restaurant or bar space." The process for finding a replacement tenant will unfold later this year.

You can share your feelings on the topic at tonight's Capitol Hill Housing monthly board meeting at 6:00 p.m. at Seattle University, in room 500E on the fifth floor in Casey Commons. Public comment (on any topic) is limited to 6:05 to 6:20; the rest of the meeting (except one discussion of the price of a property) is open to the public, but the Canterbury/Fredonia lease situation is not on the agenda. A website apparently organized by Canterbury fans, Save Our Canterbury, is asking people to call CHH and lobby to have the lease renewed, but it appears that ship has fully sailed. CHH indicated that there will be future forums for community discussion on the issue—we'll keep you posted. UPDATE: I may have inadvertently mischaracterized CHH's stance here; Seiwerath says, "It was not my intent to indicate that there will be future forum for community discussion. We are not planning any."

Convoluted, indeed. And too bad all around.

• Kelly O

What else: One wall has plants growing fluffily out from it, giving the room a weighted and prehistoric grandeur. Stacked together, the leaves resemble a breathing green passageway that's too dense to peer through, probably a porthole to some distant world—maybe one that's shimmering and dreamy, with mermen and rose-colored skies. (Though it might as easily lead to an unfriendly terrain, all barren and inescapable, so I just couldn't bring myself to walk through it.)

Happy hours: Daily 5–6:30 pm and 10 pm–close.

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