Dining Deals
Suds and smiles, soups and salads to boot

By Kathryn Robinson
Special to The Seattle Times

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Having just returned from Ireland, where I subsisted almost exclusively on pub food, I find myself freshly credentialed to review a place like the Hopvine, a community watering hole on 15th Avenue East. It has one quality very much in common with its confreres on that emerald isle — and nearly every other that's different.

Take the food. Where pubs in Ireland headline starch in variously greasy manifestations, the Hopvine's starches are fashioned with a light and greaseless hand. You'll find lots of these on the appetizer list — chips and salsa, hot artichoke dip with pita bread, potstickers on a bed of spinach — and they are generally solid. Pizzas and grinders make up the bulk of the dinner list and, though perhaps not the most nuanced of their genre, they are nevertheless just what you feel like sloshing down with a beer.

Best, the Hopvine trains a particular eye on its soups and salads, offering a handful of each every day. Irish pubs, by contrast, do not appear to be acquainted with lettuce.

Hopvine Pub 507 15th Ave. E., Seattle; 206-328-3120 Pub fare $$ Hours: 11:30 a.m.-midnight Sundays-Thursdays, 11:30 a.m.-2 a.m. Fridays-Saturdays. Beer and wine / credit cards: AE, D, MC, V / smoking section in back / no obstacles to access. Rating: recommended.

Other differences have to do with ambience. Unlike in Ireland, kids are not allowed at the Hopvine but smoking is — in the section in the back. (Yes, you read that right: As a result of a new Irish public-health law, smoking is verboten in Irish pubs even as it is still legal in some American ones.)

Of course, a loving attention to beer is the common ground with those foam-loving Irish public houses, which Hopvine displays through its dozen beers on draft and even more in bottles. Together these add up to a grand tour of Northwest breweries, thoughtfully chosen and carefully served.

Which is but one aspect of a larger commonality, an intangible I'll call "spirit." In the tradition of its sister pubs the Latona (Green Lake) and the Fiddler's Inn (Wedgwood), the Hopvine is casual, welcoming, staffed with friendly folk, enlivened with folk music some evenings — in short, possessed of that easy, affable something that transforms a place into a place worth seeking out. Not unlike a certain island I know.

Check please:

Pizza garlic knots: Pudgy knots of dough, à la Pop 'n' Fresh, arrive screamin' hot, dusted with Parmesan and all ready to dredge through feisty marinara. The whole lot breathes garlic and goes down very, very good with a fresh, foamy Maritime.

Morel soup (cup): If the real test of a place is its homemade soup, Hopvine passes. This darkly brothy concoction, rich with morel flavor, featured enough onions to seem like a particularly earthy onion soup. Nuggets of feta cheese added spark. (Psst! Reliable rumor has it the author of the Hopvine's best soup recipes is coming out with a soup cookbook in the next few months. Stay tuned.)

Greek salad: The usual suspects — cukes, feta, red onions, Kalamata olives and tomatoes — conjoined refreshingly in a terrific vinaigrette.

Betsy's pizza: The disappointment of the evening wasn't even that disappointing. Indeed, pepperoni, good sausage, olives, mushrooms and mozzarella happily overpopulated a thick crust, which was unfortunately pretty lackluster. We got the 10-inch — the medium — which, with a salad, would easily serve two.

Brownie: Once you've killed your evening's beers, order yourself a nice round red wine and slide into one of these babies for a finale. A chocolate-chip-hazelnut cookie was also floating around our table, but it was the brownie I wouldn't let go of. Chocolatey-chocolatey chocolate, and tooth-sinkingly chewy.

Itemized bill, meal for two

Pizza garlic knots $4.95

Morel soup (cup) $3.75

Greek salad (large) $6.95

Betsy's pizza (10-inch) $11.95

Brownie $2.25

Tax $2.62

Total $32.47

Kathryn Robinson: kathrynrobinson@speakeasy.net

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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