“It’s culture, and it’s building itself. All you have to do is give it a space,” manager Keith J says about Spice Bar & Bites.
The new hangout has hopes of growing on this stretch of Broadway between Pike and Pine as a bar and a space for “dance nights & events with seasoning on ‘em.”
You will also see some familiar faces from other venues who are banding together to make Spice Bar their own.
“Seattle nightlife has become this monotonous, the same song played in every bar on Capitol Hill for the past five years,” Keith J says. “You give people a place that actually lets them dance, and they’re like, ‘Finally!’”
The hopes around Spice Bar are growing.
The new spinoff opened directly across the street from Spice Bliss, the Indian takeout spot that’s been slinging curry and wraps out of a converted storefront since 2020.
Chef/owners Jagminder Singh and Navjit Singh worked as Uber and Lyft drivers and leaned on their family experience in the restaurant business to open the project on the east side of Broadway in a former Taco Del Mar and managed to survive and thrive through the pandemic and on.
In 2024, CHS reported on the plans for Spice Bliss to move across the street into the new commercial spaces being prepared as part of the opening of the Pride Place affordable queer senior housing development.
The plans have shifted over the years and now Keith J says Spice Bar is working to establish itself on its own terms while Spice Bliss continues to serve across the street.
“They named it Spice Bliss over here as well, intending to keep both sides, but it was kind of a marketing error,” Keith J said. “So I’ve convinced them that what we should do is name this Spice Bar & Bites, and then keep down the Spice Bliss, to kind of expand the impact.”
Spice Bar & Bites is now operating on its own path: part restaurant, part neighborhood bar, part after-dark dance club, with a menu that leans into bar-food staples with an Indian twist: butter chicken pizza, meat lovers pizza, nachos, tacos.
“They’re actually really f—ing good,” Keith J said. “It’s made all from scratch, and it all has a different vibe to it.”
Keith J came to the project by way of Queer/Bar where he spent the past several years bartending. With Queer/Bar being taken over by The Cuff ownership and tumult from walkouts by drag performers and staff, Keith J’s matchup with Spice took shape. Others followed, he says.
The timing worked out almost too perfectly. “It was two weeks between when we all stood up and walked out of Queer/Bar and when we had our grand opening. It was just like one bar after the other.”
Keith J interviewed for a standard bartending shift at the not-yet-opened Spice Bar months earlier and pitched the owners on something bigger than a restaurant. “I said, no. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, we’re going to pack this place out. We’re going to make this a daytime bar, and then a nighttime club. And they said, ‘You know what? Absolutely.’”
That pitch turned into hiring, programming, pricing, the works, much of it staffed by former Queer/Bar bartenders.
The opening weekend, which staff nicknamed the “Grand Spicening,” pulled in nearly 500 people and spilled out onto the sidewalk.
Programming leans into identity without being exclusionary, Keith J said. Wing Wednesdays, Taco Tuesdays, trivia nights, and a Black, Brown, Trans and Queer comedy night are already booked out through September, alongside “Spice Thursdays,” a weekly hip-hop and Jersey club night.
Keith J is careful to draw distinctions between Spice Bar & Bites and its bigger neighbors — including next door’s Neighbours. It isn’t trying to replace Queer/Bar’s large-scale drag productions, and it isn’t sized to compete with a venue like Massive, which can hold hundreds.
Plans are underway to add two street-facing patios with garage-door-style windows that can stay open during the day and seal up for sound once the space shifts into club mode at night, a transition Keith J says mostly manages itself. “During the day it’s such a prime location, we put on sports or drag race, and people filter in,” he said.
Bliss Bar is taking shape right under Pride Place, the LGBTQ-affirming affordable senior housing development from Community Roots Housing. Other street level neighbors in the development are Insomnia Cookies, Sunright Tea Studio, and GenPride’s community and service center.
Life in the middle of Broadway is full of energy and connections for many of Pride Place’s residents though the area’s street disorder has taken its toll on some.
Being a good neighbor is going to be a crucial element of Spice Bar’s hopes.
Keith J said the relationship with residents has been mostly positive, if not universally so.
“It’s hit or miss, there are neighbors up there who just want to complain,” he said. “But then there are the ones who come down, and they’re queer folks, and they see us having a good time, and they just rock on with it. It’s overwhelmingly positive.”
A number of Pride Place residents have already become happy hour regulars and the bar is planning a new “Golden Hour” program, opening an hour early on select weekdays with discounted food aimed at older neighbors.
“We want to be good neighbors,” Keith J said. “At the end of the day, I think it’s an interesting choice to put a retirement home on the busiest intersection of Capitol Hill, but they’re queer too, so they deserve to be here in our neighborhood. We’re doing everything we can to be good members of it.”
Spice Bar & Bites is open daily at 1515 Broadway, with happy hour running from 3 to 6 PM. Follow @spicebarandbites for updates.
Subscribe to CHS to help hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month — or choose your level of support