Bar Exam

If you’re trying to get to the Polar Bar from the entrance to the
new restaurant JUNO on Third Avenue, a uniformed doorman with a
handsome African accent will escort you to the elevator and press the
button for you. You will have missed the gleaming white marble
entryway up the block on Cherry Street; it faces a giant pit of a
construction site and leads into the new Arctic Club Hotel. At the
front desk, stacks of old-fashioned white shirt collars are captured as
art under bell jars, and on the walls hang photographs of the white
faces of the original members of the Arctic Club—profiteers
from the Klondike Gold Rush, a who’s who of yesteryear Seattle. In
1916, the club commissioned the building with its famous decorative
walrus heads (originally with ivory tusks, which were replaced with a
lighter material lest they impale pedestrian’s heads in an earthquake).
It had a bowling alley, card rooms, a barbershop, and a rooftop
garden.

The lobby now houses the Polar Bar, a tribute to stolid poshness
that resides at the border of gratifying comfort and eternal
boredom. The blue velvet draperies are understated, the wood
paneling is left not-quite-highly polished, the elegant pool table
requires no quarters, the multiple groupings of upholstered furniture
are cushy without overplushness. Globes and maps make subtle repeat
appearances. Overhead: miles of crown molding, many cast-plaster
medallions, sepia-toned deco light fixtures. The interior design was
carried out by the same firm that’s interior-designed various
Fairmonts, and it feels like a less ostentatious (but equally
wealthy) version of the same thing. Two wrong notes: a
business-center area equipped with computers, and a camera above the
bar with small lights blinking.

At the bar, two young men discuss their golf handicaps. Further
down, in front of the elaborate absinthe fountain, two women
discuss very little, increasingly loudly, with a stack of bridal
magazines on hand. The antique clock on the wall is original, says the
white-jacketed bartender: “It doesn’t work.” Also stuck: the sand in a
large hourglass behind the bar. Next to it is an empty graduated
cylinder, a tiny ceramic polar bear menacing a tinier white ceramic
seal, and a martini shaker shaped like a penguin with a small bucket in
its beak. The underside of the bar is glass, cracked and backlit to
glow like an iceberg.

Water comes with a slice of cucumber, and cocktails stray into
contemporary territory—a sake lemongrass gimlet, a Tazo tea
mojito—with mixed results and prices up to $13. Snacks,
however—roasted golden beets with herbed feta, bacon, and
walnuts; duck rillettes with fig chutney—average around $5 and
are quite tasty in an average way. A tableful of rich people orders
eight organic beef and lamb sliders, chortling at their good
fortune upon the arrival of a full, white tray.

Polar Bar, 700 Third Ave, 340-0340.

bethany@thestranger.com