bar ferd’nand

Cool little spot inside Melrose Market. Had some apple cider. Came in on a Friday night with my sister. The girl serving was friendly and helpful in explaining what they have and provided some solid recommendations.

I love this wine bar. The staff are very knowledgeable and can easily recommend great wine based on your grape preferences.
Both times I’ve visited this place, I’ve had wine flights. Today, I was offered an extra few sips of wine to go along with the flavors I preferred. Great!
I was impressed with the staff knowledge of wines and ability to match wines based on my verbal preferences. Some wines are reasonably priced and others are on the pricey side. It depends on what you select. However, don’t be fooled; some of the less expensive wines can be pleasantly rewarding.
This is a place I’d love to return to on subsequent visits to Seattle. The shop is located in the Melrose Market, which houses some good offerings of cheese and meats as well.

This is in the Melrose market, and when we got cheese from next door, we brought it over to pair with some wine. We had a temperanillo and a sparkling rose that the owner chose for us, and we really liked both. She even brought us napkins and knives for the cheese.
It was a busy night, but we never felt rushed.

Awesome place, great wines even better people. Tell them about what you like to drink and ask for a recommendation. The bottle pours are always high caliber and the staff and ownership are generous about giving you tastes to make sure you get something you’ll love.

The staff is incredibly knowledgable here. I enjoyed it so much that I returned later during my visit to Seattle. The owner was available to talk to us about wine the first time (I am in the industry), and the woman working later that week tasted me through an off-​menu flight of Burgundy. The prices are incredibly reasonable for what you get. I wish I had a place like this in my hometown!

Wine and wine with a little bit of everything!
I love the concept of Melrose. You get a little bit of everything under one roof. I come here often for one thing or another. Be it for cheese, meat or wine, this place is totally neat.
Wine ~ they have quite a good selection here for wine including their house wines. Happy hour is quite good too. You can get a good bottle of wine for $ 30 or so. And order some cheese from clad and kid! Or get some tartare from rain shadow! It’s a perfectly good meal. Plenty of seats for you if you want to bring a crowd. And just enough seats if you want to come on a date or two. Sip, savor and enjoy!!! They have my vote!

Very small, cute little wine bar, with a super friendly staff — IF you happen to be friends with them already. Otherwise, pretty meh.
Decent selection of wines, although we weren’t really given any recommendations/​samples/​backstory on any of the wines.
The glasses we chose were nice enough, although they weirdly charged my CC two times — once pre-​tip, once post-​tip. Still waiting for one to drop off my bill, though.

Seriously, this happened.
We sat down and ordered 2 glasses of wine. ($ 26.00!) About half way through the gal asks us how we like it. We say we love it. She said awesome we sell it here retail for the bottle $ 23.00 = 5 glasses of wine. We would have bought bottle or two if we didn’t feel totally robbed.
I recommend this to this business owner. If you’re going to charge those prices for single glasses and someone orders a glass of wine and really likes it. Offer them a 25% discount off the glasses they ordered if they buy a bottle. or When a customer is ordering the Extremely marked up glasses of wine … offer the bottle instead?
5 days later and my husband is still irked and I don’t blame him.

A cute little bar
While waiting for a table at Sitka & Spruce we usually come here. It’s small but we can always get a good drink and talk to a friendly bartender.

This place is so cute. I love the casual feel of it. We stopped here for a glass of wine before our dinner reservations and it was such a good date spot.

Super friendly staff. Nice selection of wine. Minimal seating. Quaint and just what I needed after a long week.
It’s in a great location in Capitol Hill. Great space lined with bottle after bottle. It shares the space with other businesses, like the cheese company next door, and gives the vibe of a little market.
Go, sip, relax.

Stopped by on a Saturday afternoon for wine and snacks.
WINE: 3.0 Glass wine was fine. We had a red and a rosé.
BEER: 4.0. Truman Pils on tap.
FOOD: 4.5. The octopus salad appetizer was very good, and included olives, potatoes, and outstanding baguette bread slices. Crust nice and crunchy.
SERVICE: 4.0. Never a wait.

I came in last night for some coffee to find no barista. I noticed that there was a bar next to the coffee stand and when I got the dirty look from the one bar tender flirting with the only two girls there, I realized that I wasn’t going to get any coffee.
Don’t bother with this place.

*Good coffee, I dig the 20 and under wine table
*VERY Cap Hill hipster, too cool for school in a way, the Barista seemed a fuzz peeved we asked her for coffee
*Melrose market is stellar all the way around and this place fits right in

Bar Ferd’nand is a neat little space at the Melrose Market brought to you from the folks at Sitka & Spruce. While they have a full bar and serve food, it’s a best for wine and simple butes, as the their cocktails and mixers are quite limited, and some of the dishes left me wondering, e.g. sardines served in the can — are they trying to be trendy or lazy? But stick to wines or the occasional beer on tap and you can’t go wrong.

Excellent little pit stop for a quickie drink whether you’re waiting to hit a table at Sitka & Spruce or just happen to be in the hood for a little pick-​me-​up. Wonderful array of solid wines! Do. Go. Spend!

Well, well, well. Looks like I’ve got another new spot to frequent.
I have been here twice. Once a long time ago while waiting for a table at Sitka and Spruce. I have stopped by many times to look at the wines and speak with the man in the shop. Unlike a lot of other wine stores in the area, Bar Fed’nand focuses much more on European wines, especially French.
I knew I had to make a point to come back here so one Wednesday evening, my friend and I came here to chill and catch up. I love the atmosphere of this place. It’s a little unassuming bar serving well, assuming food. I love the big table in the wine room, but I do have some complaints: the non-​big table seats are not very comfortable, especially at the bar. The bar only sticks out a teeny bit so you can’t really tuck your feet underneath while sitting on an uncomfortable stool on a bar that does not cater to petite heights. We chose to sit at another table which was a slight improvement… slight. We also didn’t like that it was so dark after the other stalls closed. Not the fault of this bar but it definitely affected the atmosphere.
My friend settled on a whiskey per the lady bartender’s recommendation pretty quickly. They had 3 red wines of the day at the time. I tried all three as the bartender described them to me. One was ok but I wasn’t too excited. They were pretty mild and I told her I liked bold and rich in berry tones. I was debating whether to just settle for one. I didn’t want to but at the same time, I was in a a wine bar and wanted wine over cocktails.
The bartender saw me debating and she said, «you know what? Let me go to the wine room and see if we can find something for you. I don’t want you to choose from a bunch of wines you don’t like.» I really appreciated this. It was close to the end of the slow evening and she clearly wasn’t going to finish selling those bottles that night so I appreciate her wanting to make sure I got something I liked. She came back with two blends and opened them both for me. They were bold and rich in berry tones just as I wanted! I happily chose the Tuscan blend.
We also ordered the anchovies on toast. They are supposed to come with avocado but they were out so they put tomato on it. It turned out to be a tomato spread and mannnnn was that toast good! It was warm and toasted to perfection. It was hard to imagine the tomatoes was a second choice because the flavors tasted spot on.
We had a great chill evening at Bar Ferd’nand. I like that it’s not really considered a destination bar for most people… I’d happily enjoy it as mine all by myself (well…and with my friends)! :)

I’ve been here a couple of times now, and have really enjoyed it. We’ve come here for snacks post-​work, and I like the oysters, the avocado-​on-​bread-​with-​anchovies, and have had assorted other things that I can’t recall as well. I blame the wine.
Wine recommendations have consistently been spot on! And the atmosphere is homey and clean, while all the bartenders have been hipsters — cute, stylish hipsters.
What more could you possibly want in a bar?

I got to try this little wine bar during a private event for an engagement party. What a cute place just inside the Melrose Market. My favorite touches were the wine barrels set up everywhere to stand around and use as cocktail tables. The atmosphere was very fun.
We enjoyed some very good bottles of wine and sparkling wine. For this gathering the wine was available to self pour. The staff was available to make sure the wine never ran out. They also did an amazing job being invisible and cleaning up used glasses, plates, etc.
I had a great experience here and can’t wait to come back and try it again. Parking is a pain.
(My ¹⁴⁄₃₀ for November)

Its taken me a year, but I finally found a reason to love Bar Ferd/​nand and to come back and review them and up level, which is deserved.
Last weekend, we enjoyed a Melrose Market lunch, and I had to admit the option to take our Homegrown sandwich over to enjoy with a glass of tasty languedoc wine by the glass at Bar Ferd/​nand while watching the food sales at Rain Shadow and food prep at Sitka and Spruce does make this location unique. Friendly, approachable service adds to the good feel of this place.
While we did get some wine recommendations last year that didn’t work for us, I think as a wine bar Bar Ferd’nand works quite well, and is exceptionally situated.