When you discover it, you may’t unsee it. The burgers at Sam’s Tavern on Capitol Hill come to the desk positioned simply so, tipped so it seems just like the bun is forming a grinning face. “We would like it smiling at you,” Sam’s founder James Snyder says. “Sitting on the sting of the basket and exhibiting all of the elements.”
Sam’s has loads of hefty choices below the Connoisseur Burgers heading on its menu, like a patty that’s 50 % bacon or one topped with “a gargantuan quantity of mushrooms.” However hidden decrease down is my secret resolution to a burger craving: Sam’s All American Cheese Burger. A sly little smile of a meal, a one-hander of a burger.
Meat, American cheese, ketchup, mustard, plus one additional that elevates the three-ounce burger to entree standing: chopped dill pickles. With a pile of fries for a complete of $12, it’s among the best offers on the Hill, a little bit of nostalgia not designed to finish up a intestine bomb. In a city of very good burgers, it’s a stealth contender for among the best.
When Sam’s opened on Capitol Hill in 2012, it got here with a burger pedigree. Snyder’s father and uncle have been the primary franchisees of an Eastlake joint that had launched within the Nineteen Forties as Sam’s Tavern, which morphed into the company Pink Robin chain we all know at the moment.
However the nook of Pike Road and eleventh Avenue isn’t any suburb, and Snyder wished—and achieved—a “actually cool bar environment.” Between the uncovered brick and kitschy taxidermy animals, plus cubicles repurposed from a Bellingham dive bar and an over-21 rule, it’s hardly a Pink Robin. Not the type of place the place, say, a gaggle of youngsters may roll as much as share three baskets of Clucks and Fries for the bottomless fry refills (er, sorry about that, Olympia Pink Robin workers of the late ’90s).
This distant relative does hit a core reminiscence or two for anybody raised on Freckled Lemonade and Buzz Sauce; the callback is a function, not a bug. Service at Sam’s is breezy, flavors are easy. Although the All American doesn’t technically include bottomless fries like the remainder of the joint’s burger choices, each time I’ve ordered the compact little meal, the server provides extra.
Sam’s Tavern, together with the South Lake Union and Eastside places it has spawned, provides a 30-minute problem that entails 4 of its full-size “connoisseur burgers” and 4 servings of fries. (“In all probability a pair hundred individuals have tried it, and possibly 10 % end,” says Snyder.) However the All American is blissfully the alternative, a burger expertise that leaves the diner on the comfortable facet of full.
The final time I popped into Sam’s for an All American burger, the patron on the subsequent barstool apologized upfront, saying, “Claudia’s simply gonna have a look at you.” Claudia, because it turned out, was a chihuahua-size canine in somewhat jacket he held on his lap, and he or she certainly glared at me for the entire meal. It’s the type of factor that may by no means occur at a Pink Robin however feels completely becoming for a Seattle bar. I will not be able to share a smile with my cheeseburger, however I’ll beam on the too-cool Capitol Hill pooch on the subsequent barstool.
