Need ideas for working around a kitchen beam PIP

[moonlight]

I'm in the process of buying a place and I'd like to redo the kitchen.
Ideally, I want to tear out the soffits and bring new cabinets all the
way to the ceiling. The problem is there is a beam running through the
kitchen. I've looked at a ton of pics on pinterest of kitchens with
beams but they all are either higher than the cabinets or run along side
them or somehow otherwise clear them. Or they have some sort of rustic
charm that excuses the fact they aren't perfect.

What I'm looking for are other ideas to fill the gap and make it not look so weird.

This is the kitchen:





And this is the only idea I've found so far:

[moonlight]

I found this too:



But I need to avoid this. My OCD could not handle it.

[kaylie]

Chances are you won't know if you can get rid of the soffit until you're in the house and can cut a hole into it to see what's back there. We lucked out with ours and only had electrical which was easy to move, but you could have pipes or bigger stuff in there.