Purple Cafe and Wine Bar - Seattle

Tried steelhead and roasted chicken. It came out good.

We visited Purple right after the pandemic was formalized. The food was fantastic as always and the service top notch. It was a Saturday night and the restaurant was almost empty and so I think it is going to be a challenging time economically for them. I would recommend them most highly and wish them all the best.

We went here for a friend bday dinner. Service was very slow. The steak was cold and undercooked. When they brought it back out it was better, but the whole table had already finished by the time I got my meal and the servers started bussing the table so after 4 bites my plate was taken away to get boxed up. No body acknowledged that we were celebrating a birthday and over all we all left very disappointed.

Great place but a little loud. I highly recommend it if you don't need to have an intimate conversation.

While I do love the Purple Cafe, and service was good, the food left much to be desired. The roast beef sandwich was cold and I left most of it on my plate. When the desert menu came out, there were only a few items and none that anyone at the table (5 people) wanted so we went elsewhere.

Purple Cafe has always been a popular restaurant, from inception in Woodinville. And rightly so. Excellent food, amazing wine selection, and a staff that can help to choose a wine that pairs with your meal. In our price range, we had an amazing Bordeaux (left bank) that went with our meal perfectly, and chosen by our server. Fantastic.

I was in Seattle for a conference and a local friend said I HAD to experience Purple. I had no idea the treat I would be for. I'm pretty particular about service and I have to say we experienced some of the best service I have EVER had in a restaurant. We were celebrating my friend's birthday and they brought us champagne to celebrate. Then we had amazing wine flights and wines specifically paired to our meal. The scallops were out of this world! To top off the meal, we ordered the homemade caramels. OMG. I live in California and want to fly my husband up to Seattle for the weekend just to take him to Purple. It's an AMAZING experience.

The purple chop salad was very good. I recommend ordering the full size.

It was okay, but I wouldn't recommend it or return.

Three things always come to mind - ambiance, food, and service. Here, you're paying a steep premium for ambiance and the downtown location, but the food and service are lackluster given the expectations and price, and you can easily find something smaller, better, and cheaper.

I enjoyed the ambiance - there's a huge, multi-floor, cylindrical wine rack in the middle of the restaurant, and as we were walking in we saw someone exiting the wine rack through a door built into the shelves on the second floor. Pretty neat!

It's dark without being too dark, nicely appointed without being overly fancy or excessive, and seems to have its own distinct character. In short, stylish, but relaxed.

But, it's also larger, seats a significant number of people, and you're going to have noise from all those tables. The tables are appropriately spaced and not jammed together. It's appropriate for a casual date or funner night out, and not so much for a quiet, intimate, or romantic evening.

It falls down on food and service.

The cocktails and drinks were standard. Nothing blew us away, which is an issue at a nice wine bar. These days it's not hard to find exceptional wines, and curating a consistently great selection is very doable - but we didn't experience that here.

The food had a few great highlights, like my scallops being top notch, and a fantastic hard-bread as part of an appetizer, and some other individual pieces from each dish. But overall the dishes were the epitome of food trying to be classy without being done well. You can have a fancy menu, but if you don't execute well...it's still "meh" food.

The service wasn't bad, but not what I would have expected. It goes back to size - they're serving a lot of people. We had a rotation of 5-ish people helping us instead of 1-2. At certain points we joked that we had been forgotten, and we even wondered if our dessert order was unwelcome. And again - at a place

Highly recommend the “Wine Bar Experience” menu. Staff were welcoming and service was prompt despite every table being occupied.

I hadn't been to Purple in a couple of years. I went with a male friend of mine who is visually impaired. The waiters, staff, and other customers were courteous and friendly. We both had the lobster mac & cheese and it was fantastic.

Great location, food and service! If you are looking for an elevated meal with amazing wine pairings, this is the place for you.

Great date night spot. Lobster Mac and cheese was to die for. The sommelier came over and poured us complimentary wine that went with the lobster Mac and cheese and it was such a special touch! We were not expecting that!

The best!!!!!

We went to Purple for our wedding dinner and it was excellent. The manager even surprised us and brought up to a special room in their wine tower that is hidden from the rest of the restaurant for a special dessert. It was very unexpected and extremely nice of them. A great gesture from the restaurant and manager. We highly recommend them as the food is very good but the overall experience was soo great because they went our of their way to make
our dinner special. We will be back. Thanks Purple!!

The food was amazing, service was terrible. Our server was inattentive, didn't listen, and was a poor communicator. One of the orders given out was an allergy risk and it took 45 minutes to replace the meal, everyone had received boxes before the last person even had their meal in front of them.

After alerting a manager, she took care of all of our appetizers, the 20% service charge (which was ridiculous), and the messed up meal. We appreciated her efforts and were super grateful that she was understanding of the situation.

I would love to try to visit in the future, but not anytime soon.

Came here with my boyfriend and a close friend visiting from NYC. Very cool interior space, friendly staff. All the food we ordered was so delicious we did not get any pictures! We ate it too fast!
We had calamari, crab cakes,
pork shank, charcuterie board, duck, NY steak, and peanut butter mousse and caramels. Great pairings with all the food.
We will be back to try the next seasonal menu.

Amazing food and service.

We waited quite a while for our food to arrive while other tables (seated after us) were served. I don't appreciate the 20% automatically added to the check--that coupled with the noise level--once the place filled up we had to shout at each other (there must me something that can be done to dampen it in that cavernous space) we will think twice about lunch here when the Capitol Grille is right across the street for a comparable value with MUCH better ambiance....

We had hamburger with fries. The fries were over cooled.
A shared creme brûlée for dessert has burned sugar on the top. I have eaten there many times before and this was a disappointment.

Outstanding food with great wine pairings. Exemplary service.

Being seated in the middle of the restaurant in front the door when there are empty tables (plenty) around the room was a judgmental offense. We won’t be back again. used to love this place. No longer

The food was good, the portions a bit large. Great wine. The high ceilings make it always rather noisy, but for a late lunch after 1pm, it was a quiet as it can get. Service was attentive but non intrusive.

We had a wonderful lunch and will be back. Service was GREAT!

I took my parents here for a nice dinner and we all loved it. The decor and ambiance were lovely and the massive wine book was a huge plus. The food and service were fantastic and we all walked out with smiles on our faces.

Heading to Brandi Carlile show. Not servers fault we had limited time and it was busy. She forgot our salad. Mains were so so. 3 scallops for $30+ dollars. Would have liked to try dessert but had to pass. It’s a busy and loud room.

Our server made our dining experience extremely negative. Despite the fun atmosphere and anticipation to eat downtown prior to a local concert, it was a major let-down. The drinks were delicious (whiskey sour!), but our food was just average for the price. Don’t order the pork; half of it was bone and fat. The steak was the best meal out of what four of us ordered. I’d go again for drinks and sit at the bar.

We went on a Sunday early evening before attending a show. Service was friendly however our order got mixed up. As a result, we landed up having a rushed dinner.

I like this place but was disappointed this time. All
I ordered was sweet potato fries and sandwich, the fries were over cooked, dry and crispy. To top it all off they have adopted an included 20% gratuity which was way too much for the quality of the food and service. They will need to drop the included gratuity or I will not be returning.

Took over 10 mins for our server to stop by. Wasn’t expecting a two hour meal. Steaks were excellent. Scallops were okay. Overall price for four was expensive for the level of service and quality of food. There are better places out there.

The atmosphere, appetizers, service and wine were exceptional. I was slightly disappointed in my dinner choice of the Lobster Mac & Cheese, it lacked flavor and was sub-par compared to everything else we had.

We had made reservations online through Open Table. We showed up prior to our reservations and were promptly seated. However, we sat for almost 15 minutes before the hostess came over, apologized and poured us water. I then saw her talk to one of the servers and let them know that we had been waiting for 15 minutes and to come and assist us. Once this happened, the service was great, food and drinks were wonderful and we had a great time. Thanks

Food was good. Service poor. Wine was brought when we had nearly finished entree, even though it was ordered as a wine pairing with the food (most items on menu come with a wine pairing recommendation). Was given a choice of side salad or fries, ordered salad, but was served fries. The tip was automatically included in the bill, 20% tip, so paid for poor service. Restaurant very loud. Hard to have a conversation.

Convenient for dinner before a show or performance at Benaroya Hall. Very noisy though!

While the location is wonderful, and the food was good, the cost was not. We went specifically for happy hour and asked the waitress to be sure we could order in time to catch those prices. When we ordered wine she didn't mention that particular glass was not included in the happy hour prices. When my friend wanted to order wine to go with her meal, the waitress disappeared and we were half way through by the time she came back. Without going into a long story, just disappointed that the waitress didn't pick up on the fact that we were hoping for a "happy hour" bill. We had 3 appetizers, 2 glasses of wine, one vodka and a creme brulee - $145!!!!!!! To our horror, they had already added 20% for a tip. Surely the tip is paid based on the service you receive?? Suggest better happy hour incentives and take off the automatic tip.

Mediocre service contributed to our review. Staff spent a lot of time chatting with each other instead of with customers. Purple looked like a cool, funky place to have wine and snacks but the staff need to engage more for this place to hit the cool mark.

Wait staff and a bartender was terrific!

The service was amazing, as was the food. The French dip was tender and generous. I did not like the bone marrow au jus ( or whatever it was) at all. In fact, it was disgusting to me. You fries are the best in town. I really enjoyed the coffee in the individual French press. Nice!

We really liked where we were seated. In the back on the high up tables. The noise level was much better there.

Given what’s in the area, this is a fine place to meet a colleague for lunch, but the French Dip was super disappointing. It arrived in a wimpily soft roll, heavily pre-sauced like a bbq sandwich ... with a side of (entirely unnecessary) extra sauce. No point in dipping this soggy thing. The meat was tough. And all combined it was a slippery, tough, joyless mess.

Great food. Great service. We will be back in March when we go to the 5th avenue.