On Saturday night, there is dancing at La Puerta. The
server—kindness embodied—says the music is Latin, hiphop,
and reggaeton. Her clear implication is that it’s unfortunate that
it’s not Saturday night right now, instead of a less-than-festive
Thursday happy hour. La Puerta is dead as a doornail and twice as
quiet, with no music at all. One lone man in a checkered cap sits and
reads at the bar, while the television softly advertises a
facelift-in-a-jar called Botulex in Spanish. The Botulex spokesmodels,
smiling tautly, are the happiest people in the room, and they’re not
even here.
But where is “here”? La Puerta means The Door. La Puerta’s
prior location, some blocks away on the corner of 10th Avenue and Pike
Street—now the home of Quinn’s, Seattle’s first
gastropub—had a door, plain and simple, that went from sidewalk
to interior, as a door is meant to do. Now that La Puerta has moved to
the Broadway Market, entry is gained through the pneumatic portals
of the world’s most confusing grocery store or down a diagonal
hallway past a purveyor of gumballs. Then it’s the stairs or a glass
elevator to the second floor. La Puerta itself doesn’t have a door per
se: It’s a suggestion of a room, made by way of tiled half-walls capped
with faux-outdoor lanterns and Plexiglas panels of uncertain purpose.
(To guard against the sneezes of the rare passersby? To prevent patrons
from climbing out?) When inside La Puerta, the mind wants to
believe—to fill in the walls with Mexican bougainvillea and
the Pacific lapping at white sand as in a Corona
commercial—but the eyes see the entrance to Gold’s Gym and a
place called Massage Envy, and the brain is plagued by unpleasant
abstractions.
There is one proper door, a glass one to the narrow outdoor deck,
where plastic tables wet with rain and deflated rainbow-patterned sun
umbrellas wait for summer under the eyeball of the Broadway Market
clock. Inside, brightly colored wooden chairs—carved with
calla lilies, parrots, cacti, and so forth—stand around striving
for cheer as the room grows dim. A piece of art depicts the sun and
moon creepily cozied up together with lascivious looks on their faces.
It’s unnatural. They should get a room.
Five-dollar happy-hour margaritas are of the extremely sweet
variety, best consumed blended, like an alcoholic Slurpee.
Happy-hour snacks are nonexistent. An order of nachos ($9.20) has
unmelted squiggles of yellow and white cheese just beneath the surface,
while the ground beef precipitates burnt-orange grease down to the
plate, where it subsumes the bottom layer of chips. Some tables over by
the nonwalls eventually fill with diners here for taco salads or
combination plates. Still, it sure is quiet in here. 
La Puerta, 401 Broadway E, 324-6211.