I've been eyeballing a trip to Ballard's Splintered Wand maybe since before we moved to Seattle. I think the story is they tried to open during covid... but it took like years of work to get the place ready... there was some sort of drama. Anyway it was tough to get reservations. I think the way it played out is we visited our friend Gabby and Derek and realized they are huge Harry Potter fans and invited them along. Boom. Magic.
Even the building they picked is fun and triangular.
This was the sort of place that I went to the bathroom not because I had to go but because I wanted to see the theming in there.
I think that they were selling magic wands or some other magical stuff here.
The bar area was very cool but was so full of wizardry that you couldn't stand at it to order a drink.
I think there was a more standard menu on the back but the front was a glorious mess of a newspaper.
They had a serious absinthe menu that I couldn't leave without exploring a bit.
First though, we wanted to get some more magical potables. This was a Eudora's Ghost: black gin, rose, violet, cherou, lemon, grapefruit, and bitters. I thought the presentation was well done if a little rushed.
Lydia's fish drink was a From the Depths: dark rum, shrub, orgeat, lime, and coconut. I had never heard of shrub before and this served as a fun introduction. Shrub is a cocktail made by mixing a vinegared syrup with spirits, water, or carbonated water. A fun fact that I just knew and definitely did not steal from Wikipedia is that the term "shrub" is borrowed from the Arabic word sharāb meaning "to drink".
The absinthe came with a super cool water dispenser thing to drip water over a sugar cube into the booze. We tried the Vieux Pontarlier and the Herbsaint.
This place is super fun and I hope it is a big success. Zero foreshadowing.
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