I went to see the band Girlyman the other night at the Triple Door in Seattle. First off, it was probably one of the best concerts of my life. The venue, the band’s energy, the food—it will truly be hard to beat.

First off, I don’t love any venue in the United States more than I love the Triple Door. Concerts of my younger years were marked with smoky underground hangouts where the tables were sticky with spilled beer and benches were torn and repaired with duct tape. You had to push your way up to the front of the stage through disgruntled crowds that would love to push inappropriately against your backside to get a better view of the band. Concert going crowds in my experience, and forgive me for sounding like I’m pushing sixty, are incredibly rude. They speak during songs, stand in your personal space or in front of short people, get disgruntled and spill their drinks on concertgoers in their hasty excitement over a wicked guitar solo.

Anyway, rant aside, the Triple Door has taken all of this into account and a made a venue that remedies all of those concerns. The stage at the Triple Door is in the front of the room and the rest of the venue is full of booths and tables on staggered platforms. This means that you can see from every seat in the house. And they serve food—really excellent Asian fusion food—so everyone is tied to their seats eating and drinking, rather than roaming and getting their fat heads in front of your face. Like I said, the food and drink at the venue are excellent. We always order mango mojitos, which is a rare example of a fruity drink that doesn’t make you feel like it’s burying the alcohol like you’d mash up a pill in your yogurt. The duck buns are also simple and perfect—light and fluffy buns, sprigs of cilantro, duck so tender it falls from the bone, sweet chili sauce. The Triple Door is also in an ideal location downtown—right next to a parking garage that you only have to pay a seven dollar entrance fee after 5 pm.

And I haven’t even talked about how great Girlyman was either. I saw them once before several years ago when they opened for the Indigo Girls in Lincoln, Nebraska. They were good then, but this concert was particularly energetic. The soprano lead singer of the band, Doris, had just been given a diagnosis that her leukemia was in remission and the happiness of the audience and the band was palpable. I sometimes think that Girlyman’s recorded music can be a little bit stagnant, each song a little too similar to the last. This wasn’t the case at all in the concert’s set. Live, the harmonies are better balanced, the voices are a little bit more forceful and the percussive elements add quite a bit to raise the band out of a 1960’s-imitative vibe. The band’s addition of a new drummer was a good one. I love Girlyman even more than I used to now.