Date Night at the Bookstore Bar and Cafe

Date Night with my husband always feels like a well earned treat. We don't get a lot of chances to go out alone without our four year old twins. So when we do it feels like magic getting to experience that time with him out on the town.

We always choose a place we've never been to eat and drink at. Most of the time, it's a classy bar or nice restaurant that doesn't have a kid's menu. We want to go somewhere together that we wouldn't be able to do with the kiddos. Finding that balance between being together as a family and having alone time with him is important to me. I always feel so special on our dates because his focus is only on me. And also, the places we go are so cool, fancy, or unique, and I feel so special to be hanging out there with him. Then when we return home to relieve the sitter and we see the boys, I feel refreshed and happy, and their embrace feels that much sweeter. So here's to date nights and getting that time away to recharge and reconnect with one another, even if just for a few hours.

I couldn't decide on where to go for our night out because of too many choices here in Seattle. So it was my husband who chose the Bookstore Bar and Café inside the Alexis Hotel in downtown Seattle. It turned out to be a lovely choice and I found the bar to be quite upscale, classy, and unique. The food was contemporary and they have a large selection of whiskey and scotch. The dim lighting was a nice element and the books lining the shelves were unique details.

For our cocktails, I chose a drink called Not Your Dad's Root Beer and my husband had a Manhattan. My drink was a fun and nostalgic twist with Root Beer. It had monkey shoulder, root liqueur, fernet branca, and thomas kemper root beer. I'm not really sure what any of that is, except the root beer. But the cocktail was sweet and strong and almost tasted like an Old Fashioned. Yet the drink was sweet because of the root beer. There was a lot of crushed ice, so it was hard to drink. It would have been just right with a slim straw for sipping. His Blackened Manhattan had eagle rare bourbon, averna, aperol, and regan orange bitters. It was strong tasting, yet a little sweet. Both drinks were high caliber cocktails with a nice presentation.

For a little bit of food with our cocktails, we chose the Lamb Meatballs and the fries with the Sauce Gribiche, a mayo aioli sauce. The fries were standard french fries, nothing crazy memorable about them. I would have liked my meatballs a little warmer, but I liked the flavor of them and that kind of saved the dish.

My take home from the Bookstore Bar and Café is its a wonderful place to sit back and sip something strong and take in the ambiance. It is a hotel bar, so the vibe is downtown and classy. The food isn't blow you away good but I think the atmosphere and cocktails make up for that. We walked though the Alexis Hotel lobby and admired the Christmas Tree before we left. One of the cool things about being in downtown Seattle this time of year is that there's no shortage of decorations and a feeling of cheer to give you the feels.