Seattle has no scarcity of sports activities bars, so the announcement of a brand new one coming this summer season may not appear notably thrilling… at first. However Pitch the Child is particular for just a few causes. Firstly it’s a girls’s sports activities bar, one of many few within the nation. Secondly, it’s helmed by Seattle restaurant icons Monica Dimas (Little Neon Taco, Westman’s Bagel) and Anais Custer (La Dive, Wealthy Wealthy) together with their longtime good friend, enterprise chief Kimfer Flanery-Rye (founding father of consulting agency Inclusion Equals).
“We saved discovering ourselves in areas that weren’t designed with us in thoughts,” Custer stated in a press release. “Pitch the Child is our reply to the query: what if we created the sports activities bar we’ve all the time wished however might by no means discover?”
The brand new bar goals to “redefine” the ladies’s sports activities bar expertise. Taking on Rocket Taco’s former area (it moved throughout the road), it’s now the newest addition to the nineteenth Avenue hall, a.ok.a. Capitol Hill’s longtime off-the-beaten-path hotspot for laid-back nights out.
The identify, for these questioning — and most of the people are going to surprise — is a “cheeky” nod to a Nineties Cocteau Twins tune.
“It captures the playful spirit we’re bringing to the area and to sports activities on the whole,” Dimas says. “We acknowledge that sports activities followers come from all walks of life and aren’t a monolith, similar to us. By selecting a reputation that’s a bit off-kilter, we’re honoring the totally different views and backgrounds that make up the sports activities neighborhood.”
The Pitch the Child crew remains to be ready on their liquor license, although proper now, they’re planning for a June launch. That doesn’t imply they haven’t been busy, after all. Custer says she’s curating a bar menu “that pays homage to timeless cocktails, together with a Pim’s Cup, a gin and tonic, and a wide range of basic martinis.” The bar will even serve native craft beer, a wine record targeted on pure varietals, and Peroni on faucet (an inspiration from European sports activities bars). Clients can even anticipate numerous drink specials, which can change based mostly on the sport schedule.
“I’m very captivated with doing interactive drink specials,” Custer says. “For instance, if the Seattle Storm is taking part in the Indiana Fever, we might assign a cocktail to every crew.”
This will likely be alongside Mexican-inspired delicacies with world twists from Dimas, together with a small bites pleased hour menu.
“My background is rooted in Michoacan, a area the place meals is intently tied to cultural id, neighborhood, and custom,” she says. “I see Mexican meals via a lens formed by the intersection of migration and cultural change, and recently, I’ve been actually within the Moorish affect on Mexican delicacies and seeing the dishes of my childhood via this historic perspective.”
As for the look and atmosphere, Dimas in contrast it to a comfortable English pub.
“We’re being intentional about TV placement as an alternative of going for a wall-to-wall display screen setup,” she says. “[We’re] planning on 4 to 5 TVs, which is sufficient to catch the sport from any seat, however not so many who it overwhelms the room.”
These TVs will seize a variety of girls’s competitions, however all three homeowners agree that they’ll present males’s sports activities every so often. “Whereas our emphasis is on girls’s sports activities, we additionally acknowledge vital males’s sporting occasions, such because the World Cup, and can function them as properly,” Dimas says. “Our aim is to create an inclusive atmosphere that celebrates athletic excellence throughout the board, offering a welcoming area for all sports activities followers to come back collectively. We’ll have a shared calendar of massive occasions that anybody can entry and subscribe to.”
There’s one other girls’s sports-centric bar within the metropolis, Ballard’s Tough and Tumble. However the crew isn’t frightened concerning the pond being too small.
“The extra of us there are (lady’s sports activities bars), the extra well-liked this section of the bar market will likely be general,” Custer says. “As soon as individuals expertise Pitch the Child, they’re going to wish to go to any feminine sports activities bar on a regular basis!”
In response to an NBC information evaluation, there have been simply six girls’s sports activities bars firstly of 2025. Due to additions like Pitch the Child, that quantity is projected to quadruple by the top of the yr.
“We’re proud to be a part of that wave. There’s actual momentum right here, and it’s solely going to develop,” says Flanery-Rye. “The extra visibility we give to girls’s sports activities, the extra demand we’ll see, not only for protection however for areas that remember it. We’re not simply using a pattern; we’re serving to lead a shift that’s lengthy overdue.”
Pitch the Child will likely be at 600 nineteenth Avenue East on Capitol Hill. It plans to open this summer season. For updates, observe the bar on Instagram.
