Oh My God Berlin

Saturday, November 8, 2008

I'm Writing About Black Bottle

Think starkly decorated, monochromatic drinking hole.

Words bounce off the walls in a crisp staccato beat. The buzz feels foreign: a sliver of the Lower East Side forcibly carved into a Belltown storefront. Try the prosciutto and bechamel or the laab gai.

I'm Writing About Molly Moon

Molly Moon is an ice cream flavor laboratory, a tiny classroom where the subject is how to create something delicious by combining disparate flavors like balsamic vinegar and strawberry.

The lines are long, the ice cream is thick and chunky, and the buzz wavers between gourmet restaurant and neighborhood soda shop.

I'm Writing About Liberty

Ellen Forney’s sexy ‘hands’ paintings used to hang inside this bar above the sofas, making it seem as if cartoons were reaching through the walls to try to finger the furniture.

Boring poster art replaced ‘hands,’ but nothing else has changed: plush couches are still available to intensify the warm sinking feeling after a particularly strong ginger-cucumber concoction and good bar music makes rather run-of-the-mill epiphanies sound profound.

I'm Writing About Cafe Presse

Bartenders with mullets, writers with Ira-Glasses, and the freshly-scrubbed Sitka and Spruce crowd all look gorgeous under Café Presse's perfectly-sized skylight.

Everything to everyone, Presse's magazine rack stacks Artforum next to Newsweek next to Adbusters next to Cooking Light. At night, the Brazillian Girls pulse through the dimly lit dining room as writers sip wine, down cubes of cheese and liveblog on their laptops. The subtext being, don't we all look ridiculously cool sitting here?

I'm Writing About B+O Espresso

An anthropologie store that just happens to serve fondue, B+O doubles as an antiques parlor and the classiest train stration on capitol hill. Desserts are a delightful clusterfuck.

I'm Writing About Wild Ginger...

A shmancy asian banquet room, like something out of a super sweet sixteen finale, bigger than an airport frequent flyers club, with waitresses who talk like dental assistants: sweet but not the brightest bulbs.