First Call: Gold Rush Flashback at the Arctic

First Call is a weekly Voracious feature in which our writers walk into a bar and ask the bartender to make us his or her favorite drink.

Locale: Juno, Arctic Club Hotel, 700 3rd Ave., www.arcticclubhotel.com

Barkeep: Jason Pruess
Seattle is a small town. Jason also appeared in a First Call last fall at the College Club. He left the CC this summer to help open Juno, the Arctic Club's first-floor restaurant. He says he misses serving some of the regulars at his old gig, but has enjoyed the chance to try something new. Pruess tried to insist on making a different, more exciting drink, once he realized this was going to be blog material. After all the Arctic Club's drink menu includes some creative options made from seasonal ingredients like the flirtini: vodka with champagne and pomegranate, passion, blood orange or peach puree ($5 during happy hour, 3 p.m.-6 p.m.). But I assured him that simple, sweet and creamy would do just fine.

Beverage: Colorado Bulldog
A what? Apparently that's what they call a Smith & Wesson in the Midwest, perhaps because they lack our gun obsession in those square states. It's a tasty mixture of vodka, coffee liqueur and cola poured over ice-- an apt velvety salve for a chilly Monday evening.

The bar at Juno, the hotel's primary restaurant is a fine place to have a cocktail, but it's definitely worth taking advantage of the opportunity to walk your drink around. (Which is allowed and even encouraged.) Head upstairs to the Polar Bar. Pruess said it reminded him of The Shining. He wasn't kidding.

Back in the go-go days of the gold rush, the Arctic Club was a place for Northwest adventurers, freshly home from the wilds of the Klondike to puff on stogies and share their stories. It was a gentleman's club, complete with amenities like a bowling alley, rooftop garden and a barbershop-- and built to be showy. At one time the walrus tusks lining the building were actually made from ivory.

The Polar Bar is just off the hotel lobby. It offers casual, leather-clad seating in a room with desks for map studying, a fireplace for warming up and a pool table for winding down. The staff is so friendly it adds to the ambiance of the Arctic as a throwback to a forgotten time of simple yet stellar customer service.

Before heading back to Juno to order another drink and nibble on some Snake River beef and lamb sliders with kalamata tapenade ($3 each), walk up to the third-floor Northern Lights Dome Room, fully restored to its original 1917 luster, and a terrific place for a winter gala should you need space for a few hundred of your closest comrades.