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Follow The Light

Here at Daphnes, we match our cocktails with the sunlight.

Okay, okay, it was just a fluke. But a beautiful one at that. Since our bar faces south and we’re a couple blocks from the Sound, we get all the bouncing rays from the waves. When the moment is just right, the light reflects off the windows of a docking ferry. In other words, magic from all angles.

Join us for a sun bath, won’t you?

Daphnes 2/6/24 Daphnes 2/6/24

“In Edmonds, our critics ponder life and death over excellent cocktails”

Seattle Times writers Moira Macdonald and Bethany Jean Clement recently took a little jaunt to Edmonds to put a fresh spin on their Dinner and a Movie segment. Thankfully they landed on Daphnes and the Edmonds Theater, and we are lucky enough to be a fly on the wall to their musings. Take a read below, and be sure to check out full link to The Seattle Times article.

Dinner at a Movie, now rapidly approaching its sixth anniversary, is a simple formula: A food writer (that’s Bethany Jean Clement) and a movie critic (that’s Moira Macdonald) visit local moviehouses together, in search of atmosphere, food/drink that goes beyond popcorn, and transcendent experiences (such as the old-timey delights of Burien’s Tin Room Bar & Theater).

We’ve been all over — crabcakes in Redmond, heated seats in Bellevue, scary macaroni-and-cheese balls downtown — and along the way we’ve transformed from friendly colleagues to close friends. Now that we’re a little low on new theaters to evaluate (we’re waiting for you, Cinerama!), D.A.A.M. has set out on a series of day-trip adventures — to Port Townsend, Tacomaand now Edmonds.

Moira had long wanted to check out the Edmonds Theater, a classic vintage moviehouse; Bethany had been told that life was only worth living if it included experiencing the charms of Daphnes, the adjoining bar. So, we headed north on a rainy midafternoon to find good cheer — and, as it evolved, the contemplation of love, loss and the very nature of existence.

The lovely drinks and a perfect snack

Bethany: We deemed it appropriate for our Edmonds outing to eat and drink first — you only live once, and with Daphnes rumored to be nearly literally miniature, this would give us the best chance of getting seats. Lo and behold: When we arrived just after 4 o’clock, stepping out across the charming threshold was a pair of happy patrons vacating one of two tiny, cozy booths. Kismet!

Moira: Indeed! Seriously, this place is about the size of Tom Hanks’ boat in “Sleepless in Seattle,” if I may employ a rom-com reference, because frankly, this seems like the sort of place that could hatch a million rom-coms. It is so small that Bethany was unable to take a photograph of our drinks without uttering the immortal sentence, “It’s got people’s butts in it.” (The photo, not the drink.) But Daphnes is an absolute dream: vintage memorabilia on the walls, Sinatra crooning from the speakers and a wee 10-seat horseshoe of a bar, filled with people having a wonderful time.

Bethany: Much of the wonderfulness may be credited to barkeeper Desmond Van Rensburg, who, now that Murray Stenson has departed this earth (rest in peace, and the drinks in heaven just got a lot better), might be officially deemed the World’s Best Bartender. He looks to have stepped out of “Mad Men” — so dapper! — and he is effortlessly, entirely amiable, asking at one point of the jolly little room in general, “Everybody happy?!” Which is a question that, while in this case clearly rhetorical, should be asked much more often.

Soon we were in possession of two perfectly balanced, utterly delicious cocktails. When I ordered mine — the Prohibition-era classic Lions Tail (Daphnes seems opposed to apostrophes; $14) — Van Rensburg celebrated by shouting “LIONS TAIL!,” and continued to do the same whenever called upon to make another one. (The name refers to “twisting the lion’s tail,” or nettling the British, with their lion-emblazoned royal coat of arms; perhaps Van Rensburg is still jubilant about our independence.) With bourbon, allspice dram, lime and bitters, it tasted dark, strong, warm and tropical simultaneously, a storm on an island, somehow ideal for being ensconced inside Daphnes on a rainy Edmonds autumn afternoon.

With the Lions Tale and a Dez 75 in the foreground, and the anatomies of happy patrons in the background, this is pretty much the entirety of tiny, lovely Daphnes in Edmonds. (Bethany Jean Clement / The Seattle Times)

Moira: My drink, by contrast, was sunshine in a glass: the Dez 75 ($14), presumably named for Van Rensburg and sparkling with gin, St. Germain and lemon. It tasted like the world’s happiest lemonade, and luckily we had a movie to get to, or quite possibly I might still be sitting in that little corner booth, ordering yet one more. It was almost as delicious as Diet Coke, and from me that is high praise indeed.

Bethany: Truly! Moira drinks more Diet Coke than you can possibly imagine! My sip of her Dez 75 was tart, sweet and refreshing all at once, just like a conversation with Moira herself. “A perfect place!” she said. “How clever of you to find it!” And we were momentarily in the novel of our own writing. And: fin.

Just kidding! We also availed ourselves of Daphnes’ only available snack — a prettily thrown-together spread of our own little loaf of hot, crusty bread; slices of tart green apple; orange-fig preserves; and a sizable ramekin of warm Brie dip — and it was also perfect.

At Daphnes in Edmonds, there is only one snack available; luckily, it is perfect. (Bethany Jean Clement / The Seattle Times)

Moira: It involved every food group (fancy fig jam is a food group, right?). Just add popcorn and that’s all you need!

Bethany: You’ve got the food groups precisely right, and popcorn is the world’s best vegetable. So, to the movies!

The charming theater and wistfully sweet film

Moira: Right next door to Daphnes is the historical Edmonds Theater, born nearly 100 years ago as the Princess Theater (the original Princess, opened in 1916, was across the street, where the Edmonds Bakery is now). It’s been continuously operated as a single-screen cinema since 1923, not 1924, as an erroneous (but lovely) mural on the lobby walls would have you believe, and centennial celebrations are being planned for the weekend of Nov. 11 — watch for details of the festivities to be posted outside the theater by mid-October. It’s a welcoming place with friendly staff, beautiful deco sconces and a cozy balcony, where we sat to enjoy excellent popcorn and the current feature, the alien-comes-to-a-small-town-and-meets-Ben-Kingsley drama “Jules.”

This photo, taken in 1927, shows the Edmonds Theater, then nearly brand-new (opened in 1923) and called the Princess Theater. (Courtesy of Edmonds Historical Muse / The Edmonds Theater)

Bethany: From the booming audio of the previews, the sound system seemed anti-antique to the extent that a showing of “2001: A Space Odyssey” would be sensational here, but we settled in for the much slower-paced space-related charms of “Jules.” We’d actually seen a preview for it on our last Dinner at a Movie day trip to Tacoma, and knew we had to see it, as the alien starts drawing cats. No spoilers here, but part of the film is about feline power, while the entirety has to do with empathy, and loneliness, and friendship, and family, both genetic and chosen. And life, and death.

Moira: It’s a very, very sweet and rather sad film — based on the trailer, I was expecting a bit more of a comedy? But I appreciated its gentle pace, and the quietly heartfelt performances by Kingsley and Harriet Sansom Harris (otherwise known as the wonderfully amoral agent Bebe from “Frasier”).

Bethany: And with Jane Curtin as an interfering neighbor, I’d also anticipated some hilarity. But the sadness here is the universal kind, and the film helps. Moira, I couldn’t even say so at the time, nor on the way home in the car, but the exceptionally kind eyes of Ben Kingsley are so, so much like those of my father, whom I’m so, so sad you never got to meet. I miss him so much, but seeing this movie with you and talking about it now make life … good. So good.

Moira: I wonder if our dads might be meeting now, in some beautiful moviehouse somewhere. My dear dad, an architect, would have loved the Edmonds Theater. He was a UW student long ago; maybe he piled into a car with friends one night and came to the theater, leaving a tiny memory behind for me to pick up a lifetime later. Historical theaters are magic that way.

Bethany: Just crying a little here. I hope they’re toasting as we did at Daphnes, a perfect eternal moment.

Moira: The moral: Seize the moment. Hug your dads. Love your friends.

Bethany: And have a cocktail together on a rainy afternoon!

In conclusion

Bethany: So! Everyone should have a drink at Daphnes before they die, but the place is, as mentioned, practically the size of the head of a pin. If you’re heading to Edmonds for drinks and snacks and a movie, the adorable downtown offers many nice-looking options, and be advised that — this is exciting! — the owners of Daphnes have just debuted a new spot only a few blocks away, Bar Americano, with a comparatively majestic 30 seats. We’ll be heading back to Edmonds for additional important research, absolutely.

Moira: And EVERYONE should go see a movie at the Edmonds Theater and become part of history. The theater’s manager told me, in an email after our visit, that the audience still hasn’t fully returned since the pandemic; support this lovely theater so it doesn’t disappear! How lucky we are that places like this still exist.

Bethany: How lucky we are!

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“Between the phenomenal cocktails, friendly bartenders, and palpable big-night-out energy, we’ve never met a bar that we wanted to make “our bar” more than Daphnes in Edmonds.”

Between the phenomenal cocktails, friendly bartenders, and palpable big-night-out energy, we’ve never met a bar that we wanted to make “our bar” more than Daphnes in Edmonds. For a spot that seats around 15 people, there’s always something exciting happening here. On a Friday evening, it’s a cramped sardine tin singalong party, with “Volare” blasting while couples who can’t fit inside drink negronis and dance on the sidewalk patio. On an otherwise-snoozy Monday, their L-shaped marble counter gets full fast. Use it for a first date or catch-up with a friend, and come for textbook versions of coupe drinks like aviators and corpse reviver number twos, an Italian spritz, a frothy off-menu jungle bird, or just a platter of melted brie and baguette. That’s their only dish, and exactly what you wanted with that french 75 anyway.

The folks who bring you “expert restaurant recommendations for every situation” recently included Daphnes on their 20 Best Bars in Seattle list. Aimee Rizzo & Kayla Sager-Riley kindly describe Daphnes this way:

And with The Infatuation’s mission, “to bring you the most honest and trustworthy opinions on where to eat around the world”, we are humbled.