Seattle’s seafaring cognoscenti of the imbibing kind (i.e., all of them) have long held a special place in their hearts for the Whalemaker Lounge at Ivar’s Salmon House on Lake Union. Of the bars you could tie up to after a hard day of boating, bailing, and Buffett, it was the most homey, the most old-Seattle, and the most likely to have a whale’s oosik on display for you to admire or gawk at. This winter’s renovation, then, representing uncertain change as it did, was worrisome.
Thank Neptune or Poseidon (we’re agnostic), but the renovation looks good. CB Anderson Architects has refashioned the layout in the longhouse-style it was supposed to have. A long, copper-topped bar stretches out to your left as you enter, with a row of bar stools facing the bar itself, and another row facing a counter and looking out on the Montlake Cut. Just past the entrance is a river-rocked central fireplace, heating a much more open area of copper-topped tables and rewarding the sharp-eyed with etched instructions to KEEP CLAM.
The views of the Cut and Lake Union were always good if you staked out a window table, but now they’re the centerpiece of most everyone’s experience, along with the art of David Robert Boxley. Discreetly-placed flatscreens, tuned to sports, hang in the room’s corners.
The legendary happy hour (3 p.m. until close, which is 10 or 11 p.m. depending on if it’s a school night, seven days a week) remains: $1 off draft beer (all local) and well drinks, $2 off cocktails and glasses of wine. Fish & chips, regularly $12, goes for $9, a bowl of wild Alaska smoked salmon chowder, $5.50. Here’s the menu pdf. For lunch today, with no special pricing, a roasted beet salad with Humboldt Fog cheese and pine nuts was $8.50.
As part of a grand reopening, Ivar’s is also hosting Spring Cheers, every Tuesday through Thursday, through May 16. Tuesdays they’ve invited brewers (Odin, Georgetown, Elysian, and more), Wednesdays winemakers (Hogue, Villa Maria, Kendall Jackson, and more), and Thursdays are for high spirits (Jameson, Woodinville, Beefeater, and more). Woodinville Whiskey has an ongoing collaboration with the Whalemaker, with their spirits forming the basis of six different drinks. You don’t have to be on the wagon, either, to be intrigued by a non-alcoholic Pom-berry Soda (pomegranate syrup, cranberry juice, mint leaves, lime, mandarin pieces, and lemon-lime soda).
