New 7,000-Square-Foot Beer Hall Opening in Seattle

- by Kendall Jones, Washington Beer Blog -

When Seattle lost the SuperSonics in 2008, many people projected a dismal future for bars and restaurants around Key Arena. To a large extent, they were right and many establishments have closed. So it's welcome news that a 7,000-square-foot beer hall is opening in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood.

We'll share the exact date as soon as we know it, but the Queen Anne Beerhall is slated to open in mid-August, serving a variety of local and European beers, along with Austro-Hungarian cuisine designed with a Northwest twist.

The Queen Anne Beerhall will feature an open concept design, with seating for over 300 people, 14-foot festhalle-style tables, a live music stage, and a 45-foot bar. The location is the former home of Cotton Caboodle, a manufacturer of children's clothing, at the corner of 2nd Avenue West and West Thomas Street - - 203 W. Thomas Street. Map.

Photo courtesy the Queen Anne Beerhall Facebook page.

Lubomir Katrusin, Andrej Ivanov and Ladislav Sebestyan, the masterminds behind the project, have done this before, opening two similar establishments in New Jersey: Asbury Festhalle & Biergarten and Pilsener Haus & Biergarten,.

Local restaurant veteran Sean Klos will serve as the general manager. He has served as food and beverage manager with several organizations, including Holland America Cruise Lines, Schwartz Brothers Restaurants, and Cucina Cucina. His efforts have been rewarded with multiple awards, such as inclusion on L.A. Times’ Best Cocktail List.

If the Queen Anne Beer sounds a lot like Rheinhaus, nobody is denying the similarities. In an interview with Seattle magazine last August, Katrusin said that he credits the team behind Rheinhaus, then called Von Trapp’s, with having creating a great place, but says he can do it better. “You can’t manufacture the soul of a place. We know how to execute and pay attention to every detail."

"So far, we’ve opened the most authentic places on the east coast," said Katrusin. "We've been copycatted everywhere. Sometimes it's almost comical just seeing those places in Philly, Albany, Boston. We started the whole beer hall revolution in 2007 and then just watched these places mushroom everywhere.”