I joined a couple of girlfriends here for my first visit to the downtown Seattle version of this wine bar/restaurant this past Thursday. (I've been to the one in Kirkland several times.) The... More

I joined a couple of girlfriends here for my first visit to the downtown Seattle version of this wine bar/restaurant this past Thursday. (I've been to the one in Kirkland several times.) The restaurant area is huge compared to the Eastside version and encompasses two levels of space along with having an enormous tower of wine in the center of the restaurant. It's an impressive, yet loud, setting. The noise comes partly from the large number of people but also because there are so many hard surfaces in this place that sound bounces around - huge plate glass windows, concrete bars and floors, metal chairs and tables, and an open layout. It's gonna get loud no matter what. But it is architectural eye candy. I had a tasty salad that consisted of cubed chicken, cranberries, green onion, and celery. I loved it! The size of it was a bit more than I could handle and still eat a small appetizer of the skewered scallops - which were also tasty. Wines by the glass ranged from roughly $6 to $15 a glass mostly. Kind of pricey since you can buy a bottle of "Tuesday wine" for the equivalent amount of money but going to Purple is all about being seen. They do have a series of interesting flavored sparkling waters on the menu too that each of us sampled. One gal had kumquat, I got lavender (tasty!) and the other gal got lemongrass. I loved this stuff and forgot to get the name of the product because I'd love to have it again. My girlfriends and I were out for a night of conversation and catching up so we ignored the many single men that were clearly there to look for "talent" as one of my male friends would put it. And, there was plenty of talent to be found. It's an interesting place to go and I'll likely go again. If you want to stay under $30 for the night you'll want to pick a good choice of a glass of wine and stick with just a salad or an appetizer like we did. I can see the bill getting pretty hefty here real quick if you aren't paying attention to what you're ordering.
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Last week my friends and I were at the Purple Cafe in downtown celebrating a friend's birthday. We wanted to try this place because it looks pretty cool with the nice wine rack in the middle of the... More

Last week my friends and I were at the Purple Cafe in downtown celebrating a friend's birthday. We wanted to try this place because it looks pretty cool with the nice wine rack in the middle of the restaurant. The place was pretty busy on a Thursday night. It's pretty easy to get reservations for the place. We were seated quickly, and water came soon after. The atmosphere is definitely a mixed crowd of all ages. It's one of those place where you dress up to be seen, very trendy. Our waitress, gave us 3 menus. One for the wine list, another was the dinner menu, and then there is a small one of appetizers that you had to order in trio. We three different cheeses to try from the appetizer's menu, and they were all pretty tasty. I also ordered the Carpaccio, and some duck. Both the duck and Carpaccio were just ok. My friend ordered a bottle of wine. When our waitress came to let us taste the wine we didn't like it at all. We asked her to recommend us another bottle but our waitress didn't know much about wine. She then calls on the wine expert from the restaurant to help us pick another bottle, which she did, and we liked the recommendation. For our entrée, we all ordered the 4 course prixe fix meal. My first course was the beef tenderloins, second was the apple, Gorgonzola salad, the third course was the seared tuna, and lastly the dessert which was a brownie. The beef tenderloins weren't as tasty, it was lacking a little salt and seasoning. The salad was pretty simple and pretty good, but you can get this kind of salad any where. As for the tuna, it was dry, overcooked and did not taste fresh. I love tuna, but I barely touched it since it tasted pretty bad. The dessert was pretty good, two pieces of brownie sprinkled with some confetti sugar. Overall? The food was really just ok. If you're there for wine and appetizers, I think it's a better deal and the selection is much better. The service was pretty good minus the inexperienced waitress. You can check out their webiste at www.thepurplecafe.com.
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