Purple Café, others coming to Bellevue Towers

Bellevue Towers will bring three new restaurants to downtown Bellevue.

Larry Kurofsky, owner of the three Seattle-area Purple Café and Wine Bar restaurants, has leased nearly all of the project’s more than 16,000 square feet of street-level retail space, with plans to introduce three distinct restaurant concepts to the neighborhood.

The largest restaurant will be a new Purple Café and Wine Bar that will occupy 6,200 square feet. The two other restaurants will share an additional 6,500 square feet. Barrio (Spanish for “neighborhood” ) will bring a simple and seasonal Northwest style to traditional Mexican dishes and cocktails. The yet-to-be-named third space is planned to be a neighborhood café offering fresh-baked goods, espresso, tea, lunch, desserts and drinks.

Purple Café and Wine Bar is scheduled to open in November of this year. The other two restaurants will open in January 2009.

On the Eastside, two other Purple Cafes are in Kirkland and Woodinville.

“Purple is a perfect fit for the Bellevue Towers community,” said Scott Eaton, principal with Gerding Edlen Development, developer of Bellevue Towers. “Because it’s the ideal place for a casual lunch with friends, a date or an anniversary dinner, Purple is just the kind of restaurant that brings diverse people together in a thriving neighborhood like this one.”

“This is an excellent opportunity for us to bring both the Purple and the Barrio experience to what I believe is a spectacular location in downtown Bellevue,” said Kurofsky. “We embrace the architecture of every space we develop, and Bellevue Towers is, architecturally, a beautiful site.”

The Kurofskys launched Purple Café and Wine Bar in Woodinville in 2001, expanded to Kirkland in 2003 and opened the flagship restaurant in downtown Seattle in 2006. Purple is known for its wide selection of wines from all over the world, with a special nod to the many wines of the Northwest. The new Purple Café and Wine Bar at Bellevue Towers will offer more than 70 different wines by the glass.

Bellevue Towers is located at 106th Avenue Northeast and Northeast Fourth Street.

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