Signature Cocktail

I-Miun Liu, owner of Seattle bar-and-lounges East Trading Company, on Capitol Hill, and the Dynasty Room, in the International District.

I-Miun Liu, owner of Seattle bar-and-lounges East Trading Company, on Capitol Hill, and the Dynasty Room, in the International District.

People don’t want to be separated from everyone else. Whether it’s where you live or the culture you’re from, we all need good food and drinks and art. Those are the gateways. They introduce culture to other people.”

—I-Miun Liu, Restauranteur

Electric Coffin created custom art pieces for I-Miun Liu’s East Trading Company bar. On the wall, an 8-foot-tall resin bottle of baijiu features a depiction of a sea monster attacking a ship. Behind the bar, the Chinese zodiac wheel can be spun to allow guests to leave their cocktail choice up to fate.

Written by Jennifer McCullum

Photographed by Austin Lane Day

Each element of the bar’s wall was designed or recontextualized by Electric Coffin specifically for the space. The Seattle design firm was inspired by the old posters that cover the walls of back alleys in Shanghai.

“My mistake was looking at it in the dark,” says restaurateur I-Miun Liu of his first walk-through of the space that would become the Dynasty Room, his newest Chinatown bar, set in the former Four Seas restaurant space on Seattle’s King Street. “There were no lights in there. But when I turned on the flashlight on my cell phone and saw all the historic character, suddenly the place had potential. We weren’t creating something from nothing. There was a story here.”

That story goes far beyond the six establishments—including Oasis Tea Zone—that Liu has opened in the past 17 years throughout Seattle’s Pioneer Square, International District, and Capitol Hill neighborhoods. It begins in 1985, when the four-year-old Liu arrived in the Pacific Northwest from Gwangju, South Korea. Liu’s parents, both Chinese, met in Korea and ultimately moved Liu and his siblings to Washington, where they settled in Edmonds and opened the family’s first Chinese American restaurant. “Back then, what you see now, with places like Dough Zone or Din Tai Fung, just wasn’t as popular,” Liu says. “My parents were great cooks, but they had to cater to the kung pao chicken lunchtime-special kind of customer.” Their restaurant offered a full entrée, two sides, and an appetizer for just $3.75. “My parents didn’t speak English that well, so price was the social currency, how you attracted customers and kept them coming back.”

Liu witnessed a similar kind of transaction at other restaurants owned by burgeoning Asian immigrant communities in Seattle, where face-to-face meetings were sometimes as valuable as the menu. “Spots like the old Four Seas rallied people to come to agreements, to have a forum. The way you got people on board about an issue was to have dinner with them,” he says “That is how neighborhoods are created.”

With both the Dynasty Room, Liu’s reincarnated cocktail bar, which opened this past April, and East Trading Company, a true neighborhood watering hole on Capitol Hill that opened its doors just two months later, Liu hopes to recreate that sense of community while introducing elements of his own experiences as an Asian immigrant to broaden its scope. “People don’t want to be separated from everyone else,” Liu observes. “Whether it’s where you live or the culture you’re from, we all need good food and drinks and art. Those are the gateways. They introduce culture to other people.”

To help with these introductions, Liu enlisted Seattle-based multidisciplinary design firm Electric Coffin to create unique environments for both bars, drawing on his own personal history as well as the mood of the bars’ neighborhoods. The Dynasty Room honors the 40-year history of the Four Seas restaurant while creating a contemporary experience that both Eastern and Western cocktail drinkers can enjoy. A sanctuary-style foyer, complete with the sounds of chanting bonchon bells and a 14-foot-tall Electric Coffin–designed cardboard sculpture called Wolf Temple, welcomes guests into the space. The old Four Seas bar counter, accented with Naugahyde elbow rests, acts as a historic touch point, as does the restaurant’s original woodwork, preserved in paneling behind the bar and atop the interior columns that structure the space. “People who had been to the original Four Seas come in and can’t tell which parts are old and which are new, which feels great,” Liu says.

At East Trading Company, in the former Sun Liquor Distillery & Bar space on East Pike Street, the focus turns from history to Liu’s own biography, with multiple design elements reflecting his ethnicity and personal experiences. From an 8-foot-tall resin bottle of baijiu, a Chinese grain alcohol that makes Liu smile and recall a particular night out in his youth, to the kung fu–inspired graphics Electric Coffin wove throughout the bar in a nod to Liu’s love of the genre and his competitive background in martial arts, every part of the space is meant to evoke traditional Eastern cultures in contemporary context. “It is an immersive space that pulls from the narrative of East meets West, with I-Miun’s personal experiences woven into that narrative,” says Electric Coffin’s Patrick “Duffy” De Armas. “It truly reflects him and his story.”

A dragon sculpture on the wall of the Dynasty Room—designed by Seattle firm Electric Coffin, with architecture by Board & Vellum—was discovered in the former Four Seas restaurant space and renovated to take pride of place in the new bar.

I wanted to create something that people would be proud of in Chinatown. There's been feedback about gentrification or 'whitewashing,' but those criticisms were made without knowing my background or the background of the places."

—I-Miun Liu, Owner of Dynasty Room & East Trading Company

A gold-leaf graphic designates the bathroom, where Electric Coffin created a fully immersive collage out of old magazines and other materials gathered up around the bar’s home International District.

Cocktail names and ingredients are inspired by the Chinese Zodiac