Sip Wine Bar and Restaurant

My former colleague came into Seattle and we needed a lunch place close to my office. On a rainy day midweek, we met here and were seated right away. This is a beautiful restaurant from a design standpoint with lots of light from the floor to ceiling window on the back wall.
There were only a couple of tables seated when we came in. Right after we were seated, the hostess seated a party of four… right next to us. The tables are close together so we were uncomfortably close to this party of 4 who were also very loud talkers. The very tall and «beefy» man sitting at the next table was seated so close to me that when he went to adjust his seat, he touched my purse hanging on my chair! Very uncomfortable! We had already ordered or we would have asked to be moved. By the time we left there were perhaps 10 parties in the restaurant all seated in just this center section with the other sections of the dining room completely empty. We could hardly hear each other due to the noise from other tables. So, I give them a big minus for their lack of seating sense. I honestly don’t get why they seat people so close together when they have all those tables!
Food-​wise, I thought the food was mediocre. I ordered the fish and chips. One piece of fish on a large bed of fries. Enough to eat for me but the fish was tasteless and bland. The waiter suggested malt vinegar. My friend ordered the ravioli… the plate was huge with a well with what seemed to be very little ravioli. Not the best presentation for a modest helping, that’s for sure. The crackers served in the bread basket I had purchased at Costco a few weeks ago. So I don’t think you’re getting the anything unique from a culinary sense.
It was a disappointment and I won’t go back.

After reading some of the so-​so reviews of this place i wasn’t sure that I’d be trying Sips out. But it was just 1 block from my hotel and on a cold & windy night I just didn’t feel like walking much, for dinner.
What a nice surprise, I had a good experience at Sips. Summarized:
* Very nice layout of the restaurant & bar. I really like the way the lounge is long, and stretches along the walk way.
* they even have an outdoor patio when the weather gets nicer. And the bartender told me they have live music out there too.
* lots of windows, which gives the room a nice feel.
* staff was friendly and welcoming.
* bartender knowledgeable; i wanted to try a few different wines from Washington and he was helpful.
Food — hit and miss. the Mac and Cheese is TO.DIE.FOR. Mmmmmm — especially on a winter day! You must order the mac and cheese if you want hearty, comfort food.
Slider burgers — Meh. The bun was nice and the burger itself, very un-​notable. Also seemed dwarfed by the bun. I’d recommend they increase the size of the slider burgers by 25% or so. And if you need to increase the cost of this dish by a dollar or a buck fifty, it’d be worth it — to get a MOUTHFUL of beef. Not just the small portion of beef, compared to the very large bun.
The happy hour menu drops prices on several items and that’s probably the best way to try many things — and determine which is the «hit» and which is the «miss».
I also was told that Weds night is half price bottle of wine night. A GREAT VALUE.
If you’re visiting Seattle and this place is in walking distance — I’d recommend you give it a try.

I’ve driven by this place a million and one times and have always wanted to try it — and eventually had the chance to for my birthday dinner.
Super trendy, upscale restaurant with phenomenal service. From the hostess to the servers and bus boys, I can honestly say that I’m impressed. Our water was never empty — in fact, it didn’t even get CLOSE.
I started with a chardonnay per the recommendation of our server and really liked it — and appreciated that she didn’t pick the most expensive thing on the menu as a way to upsell. It seemed like she actually enjoyed it and she knew what she was talking about.
We shared the chip and dips — I really liked the olive tapenade, the hummus was good but pretty standard, and the roasted red pepper is good if you like goat cheese. (I do not.)
One of my favorite things about the meal was the soup that we had. It was a cream of fennel with celery root and something else — PHENOMENAL. Loved it. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful! My husband’s cesar salad looked pretty.
We both ended up getting the NY steak with fries. I absolutely LOVED the fries which I was surprised by because I normally like the thinner ones and these were pretty thick. The steak itself was decent except I hate when I order a steak medium and there are charred grill marks (almost burnt) on the outside. Daniels does that, too. I’m pretty sure that it’s standard — and that’s fine if it’s the way that they cook it, but just not my cup of tea.
Overall, LOVE this place. It was about $ 100 for everything — but for the quality of the food and the fun atmosphere, I was okay with it.

The service and wine selection made this a fun place to try for a quiet dinner in Seattle. My thoughts on the food are, it needs some work. I guess the Seattle location no longer has a Chef and the Issaquah chef is doing both restaurants. I remember the Issaquah Highlands spot as being excellent, but am not feeling this has transferred to Seattle.
I’ll try Happy Hour next time.

I think Sip will be our new go-​to happy hour/​wine bar in downtown Seattle. They have $ 5 wines, $ 5 well-​drinks and only -$ 3 appetizers but the appetizers are so filling you don’t even need dinner after wards.
++ pork & scallops (so good)
++ risotto with spicy white shrimp (LARGE portion and delicious)
— Vietnamese caramel beef (not worth the price and the sauce is awful)
+ sliders (every HH has to have sliders right? it comes in 3’s but you can add another for $ 2.50 mmm!)
+ the burger on the dinner menu is good too just pricey so if you’re there during HH just get sliders for half the price
They also have 2 gift card promos right now — donate $ 10 to St. Jude’s Hospital and get a $ 10 gift card to use in 2012. Or purchase $ 100 gift card and get $ 100 (it’s 4-​$ 25 gift cards use-​able before the end of Dec-​12, Mar-​12, June-​12 and Sept-​12). GREAT deal!
Also Wed’s are half-​bottle wine nights and Thur’s are lady’s night (HH drinks all night) and live music.

Great Atmosphere, Good Drinks, but food was mediocre. Worst of all, there was a WORM in my Halibut! (I have it on video. too bad I can’t post video here) Everyone at my table stopped eating when I brought this to their attention… waiter was nice and the manager came over and comped our dinner. Overall I think the fish was undercooked and that’s why the worm was still wiggling at me.
I think they handled this fine but, even before the worm wiggled out at me from my Halibut, the overall food quality was just so-​so my partner’s Fillet Mignon was bland… the drinks were good though. Service was ok.
I don’t think we’ll be back anytime soon.

Over my vociferous objections, my colleagues dragged me back here for lunch. While they were successful in actually eating, I was not because after waiting 40 minutes from the time we ordered for our lunch to be delivered I had to leave to catch a ferry boat for an appointment. When I checked in with two of my colleagues after lunch they both had «lurching stomachs» (their words) from the food they ate.
The young man who served the water didn’t correctly count that there were 5 of us and brought 4 glasses, then seemed so confused that there was a glass missing that we were all initially mildly amused but then really more bewildered by his paralyzing befuddlement.
Our petite blond server was initially upbeat and assured us that she could have food out to us within 30 minutes (I told her of my time constraint up front) (we were there at 12:45 and, not shocking given the quality of the food and service, the restaurant was not busy), but unfortunately turned out to be mostly MIA after taking our order and when she was there she wasn’t really present — more like a deer in headlights.
They have a new general manager — he told me had been there for 3 weeks and asked me «to be patient» after I «pointedly» (his words) expressed my frustration with the service and past food quality (he agreed there were substantial problems with both). While, admittedly, patience is not a strong point of mine, I do feel that 3 weeks is a sufficient amount of time for a good manager to recognize you have a serious problem and make drastic changes. Perhaps his hands are tied by ownership. Either way, it’s bad, bad, bad. In my view, today’s experience was much worse than the one below which prompted my first 1 star review. The two service employees we encountered should not be on a restaurant floor without tons more training. The bondage fishnet stockings with the short black skirts on skinny female employees are tacky, in my view, for a lunch service (fine for cocktail hour and dinner).
I am now officially done with this restaurant which is so sad because it’s so close to my office and is a pretty cool space (although the current layout is odd). If you want a good nearby place for some wine and food, try Purple or RN74.

Food was solid (Ahi Niçoise salad is recommended), but I can’t say I’d recommend Sip over Purple from an atmosphere standpoint. Purple was smart in that the layout works even if it’s a ¹⁄₃ full. If Sip is ¹⁄₃ full, it’s looks empty.
Recommended if you can’t get into Purple.

This place sucks!
The HH prices were a little high, but that is fine considering the location in Downtown Seattle. However, that is no excuse for the service we received at my friend’s birthday last night.
At 5:30 last night, we came here for HH. The place was not packed, quite the opposite. I ordered two apps for the table. After an HOUR, I asked the waiter where my food was — he had forgotten it. 45 minutes later, I finally got my food (it was chips & dip… I can’t imagine that is so hard to make.). My friends also ordered food and drinks, and it took forever to get that as well, but not quite as long as mine.
Once we got our bills, we all noticed that the waiter had forgotten to add happy hour prices. Once again we had to flag him down to alert him of what had happened on our tabs. 20 minutes later (this place is still empty), he finally brings us the fixed tabs.
This place was unimpressive and overpriced, plus it took forever to have happy hour. It was just frustrating. Plus the food was generic and lame — nothing to write home about. There are so many better happy hours in the Seattle area, especially Downtown, Belltown, and Capitol Hill — don’t waste your time here!

Really not impressed with Sip. Though my tiny pizza portion was delicious, the place is overpriced, LOUD, and snotty. We came here for drinks/​appetizers before meeting others for dinner at another restaurant.
One of the girls we were going to meet at the next restaurant got to the city early. She has a 5-​month-​old who is very quiet and well behaved; she sleeps through everything. But even if the baby screamed her head off, which she wouldn’t, no one would notice because of how loud the place is.
Sensing there would somehow be an issue, we asked our server if it would be ok if she and the baby came into the restaurant and sat with us for 10 MINUTES while we finished our drinks, paid the bill, etc. (otherwise she’d be sitting in her car). He said «No.»
No?
So, you are going to tell her to leave if she steps foot in the restaurant? Seriously?

I was not terribly impressed with Sip, when I went there with coworkers for lunch. Service was impeccably polite but a bit slow. Selection was about half salads and half sandwiches, but even in winter there were what I would call ‘summer salads’ — light, cold, lettuce and tomato mixtures. A warm salad would have been amazing.
Our party had steak sandwiches and ahi tuna melt sandwiches, about equally split among all of us. The steak sandwiches were difficult to eat (as evinced by my seat-​mates having to cut the steak and then put it back on the bun) and the ahi melt was a bit strange. Rare (cool-​temperature) tuna, under hot melted cheese, just makes for a lukewarm sandwich with greasy, sweaty cheese.
The side salads were nice, standard ingredients, but executed well. Crackers and bread with herb butter did eventually come out, sometime before our meal, but again, everything was a bit slower than you would expect for a business day lunch.
I don’t know if I would return — perhaps only to try the happy hour that everyone raves about.

Sip,
You have a good wine selection and impeccable service (keeping in mind the night I was here for dinner it was so empty, it was eerie). I would give you 3-​stars if Purple Café and Wine Bar weren’t only a few blocks away… but there’s no reason for your existence when their food is so much better! Currently, you are a waste of prime real estate… Step up your game… you’re only as good as those around you are bad!

Stuffy.
My co-​worker and I were by far the youngest and most casually dressed in Sip when we popped over for happy hour on a Monday evening. Most of the clientele were in business suits with brief cases in tow. If I was a classless, young broad, I’d consider going to Sip to catch a married sugar daddy begging for an affair, but my momma raised me better than that.
Snobby.
The staff seemed pretentious and not all that happy to be there. There wasn’t a friendly greeting or goodbye upon entering or leaving, the bartender didn’t offer to answer any questions about the menu and rolled her eyes when we changed our order (SECONDS after placing it and we were some of her only customers) after we discovered there was a happy menu, which we hadn’t been given.
Swank.
The lounge seating area is pretty classy looking with long leather couches and sleek chairs lining the huge windows looking out onto Marion.
Pricey.
While we came during happy hour, I was still a bit surprised at the «deals» they were offering, since they weren’t really deals. During happy hour there are $ 5 well drinks, $ 3 off of the small plates (which keeps most of the prices still at the $ 10+ range and about five different glasses of wine for $ 7. For a wine bar, I would expect to see a bigger selection of happy hour wine pours and perhaps flights or bottles.
Will I be back? Probably not. Unless I’m in the mood for an on-​the-​edge-​of-​retirement businessman to pick up my tab.

I absolutely love the interior design of this restaurant. Yes, I agree that it does kind of seem like a piece of Bellevue stuck in the middle of downtown Seattle but for what it’s worth, it’s definitely a beautiful restaurant located in a beautiful city.
When you walk into the restaurant, you are basically facing a long and narrow walkway that leads you to the dining area. But as you’re walking up, there are several lounge areas to your right where I’m thinking a lot of the happy hour business goes on there.
Anyway, the bar was really nice, almost at the center of the restaurant but closer to the dining area. There are definitely lots of tables and on a Saturday night, it was pretty empty.
The service was very good, the servers were all very attentive and good at refilling waters and wine. The bread and crackers were quite tasty and they even make their own garlic and chive butter? I don’t really remember what was in it but they made it in-​house. Pretty cool.
I ordered the black cod because our server said it was very popular. Others in the group that I was dining with had the scallops, ravioli and chicken. I enjoyed my black cod but the spicy sauce that it came with was a bit overwhelming as well as the overload of mashed potatoes on the bottom. I heard the scallops were mediocre as well. On the other hand, my coworker really loved his ravioli so I guess that was the dish to order!
Hmmm and the wine we had was really delicious… it was a white wine from, I want to say Walla Walla? Or some other city that started with W.
Overall, it was a really nice dining experience at Sip and I’d definitely try to come back for happy hour sometime.

My dept came here for a goodbye lunch celebration for one of our longtime company employees.
We sat at a bunch of grouped tables behind the left railing just inside, along the wine wall. For someplace really new and hip and modern, WHY does one of the tables rock and not rest flat on the floor? –_​– Standards, come on! We were also a smidge cramped with the chair spacing. BUT, enough of that. Great food! I had the Salmon Banh Mi. Awesome flavor, and the salmon was good, despite a lil char action. Nice, thick/​filling fries, too. The crackers & bread were good compliments, although the bread might’ve been better with OO & V instead of this buttery stuff. Staff was pleasant and professional.
The design is really cool. The shallow floor carpet has a grid pattern but each square is slightly embossed at the corners, giving it a subtle, rough, rugged, and unique feel & look. The bathroom layouts are unlike anything I’ve seen; the sinks are communal and, while around a corner, not secluded by a door, while the actual rooms have the business-​end plumbing. The mirrors above the sinks have camera displays: one of the front entrance and one overhead of the bar (so you can stare at the cute bartender chick while washing up, bwahahaha!). The sink bay is really cool in that it’s one giant sweeping 90 degree arc that’s tapered about 30 degrees down and away from you into an 1/​8″ slit opening running the length. Really neat to me.
This is also in perhaps the tallest/​skinniest skyscraper in the PNW.

Had a lovely dinner here and while it’s kinda in the middle of downtown Seattle, once you’re inside, I thought the views and ambiance was quite nice.
Had the lobster mushroom flan, bacon and eggs (braised pork belly and duck egg — yes, i have a thing for pork belly and eggs), pear and pomegranate salad, … something else… oh the potato frites.
Service was okay. Slightly snobby. Anywhoo. I was pleasantly surprised. Food was good. Service pretty good. Company was good.

Soooo… I had my reservations about this place — you know, it looked like someone took one of those snotty shitfests from the east side and *PLOP* here it is in dt Seattle!
But…really, I have nothing bad to say about this place. At all. Seriously.
And I tried to find something terrible, but really, I couldn’t.
a) v understanding that our party went from 10 to 3 people at the last minute
b) put us at a cute little table w/​in the bar area, so I could still look out the window AND see over people’s heads. This doesn’t happen v often
c) Lacy was a KICK ASS SERVER — she was attentive, funny, and didn’t laugh at my «I’d like the ahi poke and garlic mashed potatoes» odd dinner combination
d) speaking of which, those two dishes were ridiculously good, so you should order them… together
e) mollydooker shiraz by the glass… WHAT!
f) brioche bread pudding… need I say more?
So there you have it. I have nothing bad to say about Sip. All good.
*shiny star*

It’s always nice to live just three blocks from a wine bar… I spent the summer and fall walking past the construction, anticipating the arrival of Sip, and hoping for surpassed expectations. I’m not sure if Sip pulled off that feat last night, but it’s still nice to live just three blocks from a wine bar!
Some observations from my visit, including a few comparisons to Purple (which other Unilocalers have noted, and which makes sense since both spots have small plates, entrees, and wine):
1. Sip is spendy. We went during Sunday happy hour, which is great since glasses of wine are ½ price (although we didn’t order glasses but flights, which are not included in that deal, FYI). We didn’t sample any food, mostly because it’s quite expensive, much higher than comparable offerings around town and certainly much higher than Purple.
(While others have called out the glass prices as high, I wouldn’t say they’re much higher than anywhere else: there are plenty of options under $ 10.)
2. Sip has a kick-​ass lounge… Yes, you feel like you should work in finance, given the leather chairs, leather couches, and pillows that look to be stitched out of various silky tie fabrics. But there are several of these lounge spaces next the windows lining the walkway ramp up to the dining area, and as a way to sit and have a glass of wine and chat (or eat!), lounges beat tables any day.
3. The wine list… I didn’t look so closely at the bottle list, so I’m speaking to glasses and flights. It’s a pretty good list with some nice offerings (Turley Zinfandel!), but certainly shorter that Purple’s, and there aren’t many Washington or Oregon libations. They offer flights, which have three varietals as opposed to Purple’s four (and are slightly cheaper therefore). The best flight of the three was the Fully Loaded, which had the standout Turley Zin as well as an excellent Australian Shiraz (yes!) from the McLaren Vale region.
4. Why go? For happy hour drinks, glasses of wine or small plates with friends in the lounge areas. The back deck, which looks lovely and amazing, will be a spectacular spot come summer. I hope to try it out…

This place is new. It just opened a few days ago. The setting is excellent. The window run nearly from the floor to the ceiling. The décor is excellent. We came in late Sunday night so it was not very crowded. Our waitress was nice and put up with our antics. The manager was also friendly and helpful.
There is a very good selection of wine. I tried the flight called, «Pinot Envy». I found it quite good. It was late so we did not eat full meals. We just ate appetizers. I chose the cheese plate. It was good. There were four very different cheeses on the plate. I should have asked what the specific types were.
Two of us tried the sundaes. The ice cream is very good and the portion is manageable. Too often when you order a desert you get a gigantic portion.
If you are staying at the Renaissance hotel, Sip is only one block away.

We has an absolute blast last night at the grand opening. Hello Seattle, we’re moving on to 2010 and Sip is where it’s at. The food — delish: Bacon wrapped figs, which they call «figgy piggy». Ahi salad served on plantains. Kobe sliders. Wine flowing freely. Attentive service and plenty of seating.
The atmosphere is wonderful, and the entrance is grand. The place has a view of the library from some points and of the water and city line from others. Finally a new Seattle locale that takes advantage of the city views. Huge windows. Outdoor seating (summertime would be awesome. This time of year, I’ll take the floor to ceiling inside views).
The décor seems to take a few cues from the old Ibitza dinner club on 2^nd and James, though the crowd last night was nothing like that crowd. The W/​M restrooms have a shared hand washing/​mirror area (like Ibiza) with video monitors showing shots of the main areas of the restaurant. They also have the long curtain room separator effect going on, like Ibiza did. This place is much classier, though. The crowd is also all certifiably of legal drinking age, which is a nice change from some of the areas up towards Belltown.
Oh, and they have a hot happy hour — 4:30 to 6:30 everyday, then 9:00 on every day. Live music every Thursday.
You know where to find me!