This week's top hits from Eater Seattle, Curbed's sibling bar, restaurant, and nightlife blog.
FALL TRACKING -- Seattle chef Tom Douglas will open a 40-seat Mexican restaurant downtown at The Martin Apartments called Cantina Leña, meaning firewood in Spanish. The restaurant may open next month and will feature wood-fired menu items like banana leaf-wrapped pork cooked in a 10-foot-long pit. The drink list includes house-made aqua fresca, melon seed horchata, and slushy margaritas served from a 10-seat bar.
COMING ATTRACTIONS -- The cat cafe trend is heading to Seattle. Seattle Meowtropolitan is hunting for a permanent home in Captiol Hill with plans to open in 2015. If funded, the coffeehouse will be filled with adoptable cats from local shelters and serve coffee from Herkimer in a "fantasy-themed" space. A Kickstarter campaign will launch next month.
THE CHAINS -- While no plans have been revealed for locations in Seattle proper, Chick-fil-A is opening outposts in Bellevue, Lynnwood, and Tacoma, most likely in spring of 2015, reports The Seattle Times. The planned restaurants are the first in the state since a Bellingham branch at Western Washington University shuttered in mid-2011. The fast food restaurant navigated its way through a media shitstorm in 2012 after its COO answered, "Well, guilty as charged," when asked if his company held a position against marriage equality. Chick-fil-A continues to enter new U.S. markets, with one analysis group predicting that it could expand more quickly than McDonald's in the next ten years.