Je t'aime...Gainsbourg

Ask any long-time Seattle-ite or one of the last flannel-clad hometown heroes nursing an espresso in a coffeehouse and you’ll hear the same thing, “Remember when Seattle was cool?” 

Seattle, a sleepy, always rainy city, was once saturated with blue collar bars filled with fishermen and dockworkers, chain-smoking at the counter while an old lady with a shotgun threw brawling drunks into the street (RIP the Frontier Room). The grunge kids were still kids. The beer was cheap, the whiskey cheaper, and the city felt like home. 

In Seattle today, it’s tough to find the remnants of those grittier, homier hey days - when the outskirts included places like Ballard and Greenwood, when music was heavy and everywhere, the streets emptier and dingier, and you could occasionally catch a Sonic holding court at Greenlake.

But if you’re like me and you long for those days, a bar that takes you back to stiff drinks, a dark, cozy escape from the grey, somewhere you’ll chat with a stranger, get to know the bartender and also find yourself noshing on modest yet impeccably cooked French bistro cuisine - all in the absence of tech bros - you might find yourself in North Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood at a spot called Gainsbourg. 

As you probably guessed, the name is a throwback to the late Serge Gainsbourg, a boozy, French, cheeky little fellow - evocative of the man himself. Gainsbourg reminds me of wandering through dimly lit streets squeezed between cheese shops and wine bars, where Parisians and their expat counterparts - writers, artists and philosophers - gathered, drank and somewhere between seeing a green fairy and passing out in a ditch, created some of the most influential ideas and art the world had ever seen. 

But here, as you step past the strip mall storefronts of Greenwood, through an office-door entrance that gives nothing away, you walk into another world - something like a Parisian dive bar that in days of yore would have been filled with smoke and saucy patrons. The clink of glasses, the murmur of conversation padded with the scent of butter, garlic, and past-midnight decisions. Gainsbourg isn’t trying to impress you. It doesn’t have to. It opened in 2008, around the time when Seattle began its more aggressive growth and 17 years later it stands - a test against time and private equity.

Behind the bar, my friend Duncan moves like a man who’s been making Manhattans since before the Kingdome fell. I ask nicely and Duncan makes me one so stiff I’ve forgotten about the tech bro culture thriving in South Lake Union for a moment.

In here, the tin roof decor reminds me of old Brooklyn, the layers of conversations padded by grease and butter from perfectly cooked steak frites and escargot - yes, escargot served up in an actual escargot plate complete with crusty bread and without any French snootiness - albeit with a touch of North end grit you’ll find with the chefs here, moving quickly as the seats fill up by 5pm, just an hour into the happiest of hours where most of the bangers including the lamb burger are on the happy hour menu. Eat and drink and smile at the bartenders - even as a stranger in the joint, you’ll find yourself striking up a conversation with a local or a couple visiting from another part of Seattle. (Worst case, you may end up wandering over for a game of pool later at the Baranof with a stranger, but that’s for another time.)

I’m drinking wine, and then that fortified Manhattan and, why not, a beer before I have to get my hands on the frites and aioli, a magical combo that would bring any wounded soldier returning from the front lines of heavy drinking back to life. 

But don’t sleep on the lamb burger, the charcuterie board, the escargot, or any of the specials - there’s more magic in that menu to be discovered. 

Gainsbourg is more than a diamond in the rough. It’s a fucking gem in a city challenged by urban sprawl and creatives leaving in droves from high-priced rents and the slow decay of its roots in dive culture. Gainsbourg isn’t nostalgia and isn’t a dive but it’s proof that some things, good things, survive. Order the burger with frites, drink too much wine, have a cocktail or 5, talk to a stranger. Seattle isn’t dead. You just have to know where to look.