The most exclusive of three new food-and-drink rooms at the 5th Avenue Theatre is also the one nobody can enter yet. Pearl Under 5th, a private bar from Brady Ishiwata Williams and the team behind Tomō, is under construction beneath the downtown house and planned for 2027.
Williams has partnered with the theatre on the trio, Seattle Met reported the prior week: Pearl Konbini, Pearl+ and Pearl Under 5th. The first two are already open inside the theater. The bar is the holdout, expected next year, with no month or day attached.
A Referral Bar, Still a Construction Site
Seattle Magazine describes Pearl Under 5th as a subterranean private bar inspired by Tokyo's referral bars. WhatNow places the project at 1308 5th Avenue and frames it as the piece that completes the Pearl operations under the theatre. Inspiration is doing more work than a calendar right now. A 2027 target is not an opening, and an exact date has not been announced.
That leaves the concept in a usefully awkward spot. A referral bar trades on being hard to wander into. This one is hard to wander into because it is still being built.
Concessions Upstairs, Membership at the Door
Pearl Konbini is the concessions operation inside the theatre, WhatNow reports. Pearl+ is the narrower room. Seattle Met says it is open only to Seattle Theatre Group club members. WhatNow describes the same concept as food and drink for those club members and other eligible ticket holders. The practical distinction is already visible either way: club members and eligible ticket holders can use Pearl+.
The basement bar has not been given that kind of rulebook in the reporting. No menu, prices, hours or entry terms are on the record, which is another way of saying the exclusive room is still a plan.
Chowder, Then Hairspray, Then a Bar
The house itself is not a blank site. The 5th Avenue Theatre opened in 1926, WhatNow notes, and in 2002 it hosted the world premiere of Hairspray before the show moved to Broadway. The former Duke's Chowder House sat beneath the same building. A private bar in that basement is a change of job description for the downstairs, from chowder to a room modeled on Tokyo referrals.
WhatNow also reports that Williams and the Tomō team began looking at unused spaces around Seattle after an encounter with a childhood friend. The theatre is the space that turned into a construction project. The outlet does not identify the friend or spell out how that conversation became a partnership, so the origin story stays an origin story.
The Kitchen Seattle Already Filled
Demand is the part of Williams's record that does not need a rendering. The Seattle Times reported that every September reservation at Tomō was booked within four hours of his announcement that the restaurant was opening. The Times also noted his place in Food & Wine magazine's Best New Chefs class of 2018, awarded while he was at Canlis.
Theatergoers can already eat from the open Pearl concepts. The private bar remains a 2027 construction job under 1308 5th Avenue, one year out and still undated.
