The restaurant 49th Street Beast, which serves one of the city’s best burgers, will close July 28, ownership said online last week. Its beloved spin on the fast-food staple will live on in pop-ups, per the 49th Street Beast team. In a Facebook post last Thursday , management said “some things just aren’t meant to be,” but didn’t specify why they were shuttering 49 th Street Beast about a year after opening the burger project inside Fair Isle Brewing in the Ballard Brewery District.
More The closure isn’t expected to impact daily operations at Beast & Cleaver, the flagship of the business — a butcher shop that runs a sandwich counter and a dinner tasting menu on Northwest 80th Street in Ballard. Chef Kevin Smith did not provide comment by press time. For Smith, 49th Street Beast was an outlet to feature dry-aged and marbled meats from the Ballard butcher shop.
This offshoot was also a brand expansion for the chef and butcher, who was a 2023 semifinalist for the James Beard Award for Emerging Chef, which honors the best rising-star cooks in the U.S. While 49 th Street Beast sold fermented noshes, charcuterie and other sandwiches, the selling point was its famed bacon cheeseburger, which comes from ground beef that’s been dry-aged for up to 130 days.
That patty possesses a silky texture reminiscent of the famed dry-aged burger at Minetta Tavern in New York City. The burger has a distinctive, funky tang similar to a Stilton blue cheese with an intensely beefy prof.
