I love the concept of Tavern Law and their beverages (you’ll just have to trust me on this one because they do not have anything useful on their website). Their tiny kitchen right next to the bar is pushing out little small plates like the tempting mac and cheese with duck fat crumbs on top. But the space is very small, and the standing room is awkward because you are inevitably in the way between a bar stool and another stool by the center counters, or between chairs at tables… Their seats really seems much like you in the library of someone’s home, which I suppose does go with their speakeasy theme. The best place to sit is at the bar- otherwise as they craft these cocktails and also try to deliver the small plates they can’t really get around to check on anyone for refills very often.

I started out with the Flip of  Lusty Lady (pictured) and finished up with the Angry Unicorn Project (not pictured- it’s quite a manly scotchy drink) as we admired pretty people around us (some lucky ones who had made reservations and went though the show of using the phone on the wall before being let into the secret passageway upstairs) before we met up with everyone in the group and went to dinner at small plates restaurant Lark a few blocks away.

Lunch at Revel which serves an urbanized modern take on Korean was amazing- and the counter where you can sit and watch your food prepared in a kitchen so open stretches across the whole bar but is also like a kitchen in a home. We started out with a light salad of Hearts of palm, spinach, smoked peanut, miso vinaigrette- even though we did talk about their corned lamb salad. We shared a rice bowl of Albacore tuna, fennel kimchi, escarole which they advertised with egg yolk, and it was ok, but would have been so much better if it had been a shared stone bowl, which is what I had been expecting. Meanwhile we also shared the decent noodle dish of Dungeness crab, seaweed noodle, creme fraiche, spicy red curry.

We tried each of their pancakes (the Kale, walnut, arugula, pecorino was surprisingly my favorite over the Pork belly, kimchi, bean sprout one or the Squid, chick peas, pickled padron pepper one) and also each of their dumplings which brought back good memories of the half a hand size potstickers of old Hong Min. For the dumplings, we all swooned over the rich Cauliflower ricotta, black truffle sesame, pickled leek dumpling, which blew out of the water the other two options of Shrimp and bacon, pickled ginger, cilantro dumpling and the Short rib, shallot, scallion dumpling. I definitely want to make it a visit the next time I go to Seattle for personal reasons.