The entrance back in the Living Room days (Image: CHS)

Capitol Hill food and drink business partners Austin Polley and Benjamin Smith have been stressing out over a name for their coming soon E Olive Way bar.

The look and feel they want are set — “dark and red and chandelier-y” — and even though they are searching for just the right chef to really make the new joint sing, they know they want the menu to serve up “bar pasta” — healthy platters of saucy noodles, Polley says. But they can’t settle on a name.

“It’s going to be a cool, dark, red place to be in at night,” Polley said. Dark, red? Dark red?

The colors matter.

Polley tells CHS the guys behind upper E Olive Way’s Rose Temple are working on an overhaul to open a new lower E Olive Way bar in the former home of Speckled and Drake, the Brooklyn-by-way-of-Seattle watering hole that shuttered after a decade late last year. The space has been a bar since 2009 when The Living Room replaced curiosity shop the Anne Bonny in the two-level space.

The neighboring Glasswing Greenhouse closed in February meaning another new project will be joining the coming soon bar in the building at E Olive Way and Melrose..

A planned juice bar in the building has been put on hold, people familiar with the situation tell CHS.

The Rose Temple (Image: CHS)

Polley and Smith joined the Capitol Hill food and drink scene when they opened Rose Temple on E Olive Way just below Broadway in June 2019. The collaboration from the veterans of Renee Erickson’s restaurant group created a busy, active hangout out of the space left behind by a failed speakeasy concept. “We’re not a rap bar, rock bar, hipster bar, gay bar. We want to be everything,” Polley said at the time. “We’re just kind of curious about what the neighborhood wants to do with us and then we’re going to go with it.”

Polley said they hope to bring the same community spirit to the new project after finding success opening Rose Temple to events and parties hosted by local entertainers and businesses and pop-up concepts in the Temple kitchen.

But the new bar is starting with a serious food and drink core. Part of the buildout of the old Speckled and Drake will be the installation of a hood and full kitchen opening up a world of culinary possibilities for the new joint. Polley said they are searching for the right chef to own the kitchen and fully shape the menu around the red shadows and chandeliers.

The cocktail plan will be more about “spirits, Amaro, and spritzy cocktails,” Polley says.

While they aren’t calling the planned new bar an Italian jolint, the inspiration is there. Meanwhile, Seattle remains down one godfather of “dark and red” — Vito’s is semi-permanently shuttered on First Hill after a damaging fire in the summer of 2022. Greg Lundgren tells CHS the building owner is still in negotiations with the insurance company and “they remain uncertain if the building will be torn down or rebuilt.”

“We can only wait and see what that final verdict is,” Lundgren said.

On E Olive Way, the plan is for a July opening. But, first, they have to come up with a name.

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