Belltown's Lush Life will assume a new persona as Marjorie

When Café Septieme moved from its intimate Belltown quarters to bigger, less atmospheric digs on Capitol Hill, I was convinced nothing could replace it. Lush Life, sister to sexy, soulful Marco's Supperclub, soon proved me wrong: The Italian restaurant and bar owned and operated by Marco Rulff and Donna Moodie managed to capture and embrace the same Euro-funky zeitgeist as Septieme. When it, too, closed — last Saturday night, just shy of its fifth birthday — tears were shed at a lugubrious wake.

But just as Café Septieme gave rise to Lush Life, where jazz and cocktails were among the standard fare, Lush Life will soon find a new life as an eclectic bistro and bar called Marjorie (2331 Second Ave., Seattle). Occasioned by a personal and professional divorce, the restaurant is now under Moodie's ownership and will be re-christened to honor her mother. With contractors at the ready, she plans to restructure, rejuvenate and resurrect this hallowed space, expected to reopen by January.

"I'm not going to quite gut it," Moodie says, "but we will move the bar to the front of the restaurant and completely renovate the kitchen." Sound level and smoking issues will be a priority, says Moodie, who is working on finding creative solutions to absorb noise as well as cigarette smoke that, in the past, wafted from bar to dining room. Plans also include repaving, re-landscaping and expanding seating capacity in the secluded courtyard.

Marjorie will tap the "unparalleled enthusiasm" of a youthful new chef (name withheld to protect his present paycheck), whose ethnic-leaning dinner menu will give more than a passing nod to organic ingredients and vegetarian options. "I want the menu to be representative of the way I eat at home," says Moodie, an accomplished baker whose desserts will grace the new menu. Meantime, mourners can — and if a recent meal there was any indication, should — visit Marco's Supperclub (2510 First Ave., Seattle; 206-441-7801), where Marco continues to offer dinner and drinks nightly, beginning at 5 p.m.

Amigos of West Seattle's Les Tamales (3247 California Ave. S.W., 206-923-3538) have until a week from Saturday to cry over their hand-shaken margaritas before bidding au revoir and adios to their favorite Franco-Latino cantina. Owners John Grieco and Steve Rizzo will close their popular little spot Oct. 12 in order to "enter phase one of our next venture," says Grieco. He and Rizzo plan to concentrate their energies on Les Tamales' new Columbia City sibling, Deux Tamales (4868 Rainier Ave. S., Seattle 206-725-1418), and scout out a Palm Springs location for another Les Tamales.

"We'll move the trend south," says Grieco, a proud Palm Springs snowbird. "It's been a long-term goal for us and the timing is right to start the ball rolling. For all our tamale and tequila lovers, we still have our location in Columbia City, and for those who go back and forth between the sun and the rain" — in my dreams, boys! — "there will be one Tamales here, and one there."

So, what's to become of the original Les Tamales space? They're baaaaack. Shing and Ellie Chin, who recently sold their interest as co-owners of Ballard's Market Street Grill (1744 N.W. Market St., Seattle; 206-789-6766), will take possession of the restaurant in mid-October. "We planned on opening another restaurant, but we weren't expecting to find a place this perfect, and we certainly weren't expecting it to happen this fast," says Chin, who nonetheless had her radar up and an eye on West Seattle.

After a quick cosmetic makeover, neighbors will be welcomed into OvioBistro, scheduled to open by Nov. 1 with an eclectic menu, courtesy of chef Eddie Montoya, late of Market Street Grill. "Eddie's from New Mexico, so he'll offer a few dishes that will be similar to what was served at Les Tamales. We're sure that people who liked the place will feel at home here," says Chin. Shing will be behind the bar making the specialty cocktails that he's been known for.

What's up with the bistro's unusual name, which, for the record, is manufactured and pronounced "OH-vee-OH"? It's a creative take on "ovi" — a prefix for "egg," says Chin. "Eggs symbolize new things, and we're all about new beginnings. We're remodeling our house, opening a new restaurant and having a second child." What's more, if you write the letters O-V-I-O straight down, one top of one another (try it), the letters form a martini glass — one clever bistro logo.

Six months after opening, Fira, the fine-dining Mediterranean restaurant atop Queen Anne Hill, closed its doors. "At heart, I'm an economist," says money-manager-turned-restaurateur Wade Sickler. "It was hard to reconcile my bearishness with the economy and the stock market with that of a consumer-driven business" he says. "Our staff was really, really passionate about Fira. I knew it was an ambitious effort, but I saw a niche opportunity and I knew I'd assembled a talented group of people."

Sickler says that when he bought the old house at 2232 Queen Anne Ave., long home to Ristorante Buongusto, he expected a gradual increase in the economy. "Now I think it'll get worse before it gets better. And even then, I don't think it'll be too good." Sickler is in the process of putting the fully equipped restaurant on the market. "I have no regrets whatsoever," he says of his short-lived endeavor. "And on the up side I have a tax shelter and a very, very well-stocked wine cellar." Fira wasn't the only flash-in-the-pan atop Queen Anne Hill. Shirley's Bar-B-Que opened and closed in short order, paving the way for the scheduled mid-November opening of Barbacoa. Still under construction at 2209 Queen Anne Ave. N., Barbacoa will offer "straightforward Tex-Mex and barbecue" created by John Calderon and his business partner and fellow chef Bob Colgrove.

Calderon, who grew up in Mexico City before moving to Texas, later made a name for himself cooking Southwest favorites at Madison Park's Cactus, where Colgrove manned the tapas bar. The pair teamed up again, recently working for Pasta & Co. Today they're busy with the remodel, installing a mighty smoker whose combo of mesquite and live oak "provides heat and flavor and isn't too acrid," says Calderon, whose tiny new kitchen, where he'll share duties with Colgrove, is "so small, we'll be wearing it."

"I always wanted a barbecue place you could be comfortable taking a date to," says Calderon, whose 30-seat restaurant and bar should fit that bill. "Our cornerstone will be really good barbecue: Texas barbecue. Real saucy, not the dry Memphis-style or the vinegary, watery, Carolina-style or the sickly-sweet, bland, Louisiana barbecue. (So, how do you really feel, Mr. Lone Star State?)

"We want to serve fun food, nothing pretentious. Bob and I will run the front and back of the house ourselves and let the menu evolve based on what folks want and expect from us. We'll do plated stuff at night, none of that `basket of ribs choose two sides' kind of a thing."

Barbacoa will offer lunch and dinner, with average entrée prices $10 to $15.

Nancy Leson: 206-464-8838 or nleson@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists.