De Luxe Bar & Grill

(Visited on November 5)

De Luxe Bar & Grill

When I first started this blog I envisioned my burger quest would center around little "Mom & Pop" roadside burger stands.  Naive?  Sure.  Romantic?  Perhaps, but that was what my mind's eye saw.  The reality of it has been somewhat different.  I have yet to roll into a "Mom & Pop" roadside burger stand, and all my stops, save one, serve libations and offer burgers, not as their central theme, but as part of an otherwise rounded menu.  Clearly, my bias runs toward the "Bar & Grill" type of establishment.  I'm not a teenager anymore, and I rarely drink milkshakes.  When I order my burger I'm more comfortable doing so with a beer in my hand.  I have come to accept this.

So it is that the search criteria I used this time out was "Seattle" and "Bar & Grill", which led me to the De Luxe Bar & Grill on Broadway in the Capitol Hill district.  I've driven by the De Luxe any number of times over the years, but I'd never gone in; I'd seen it but it never really registered.  It's been a neighborhood watering hole since 1962, and quite frankly, it looks it; I mean that as a complement.  It's not at all flashy and blends perfectly into its surroundings in an unassuming way. And why shouldn't it?  If you think back to 1962, and some of us can, the bars of the day were places where grown up people went for a drink and maybe some food; perhaps they were looking for some conversation, perhaps not.

Parking can be an issue, and it was for us.  I drove around for a bit until I found a spot on a nearby neighborhood street less than a block away...lucky.

When we walked in I liked what I saw; the place has a comfortable feel to it.  I also liked what I saw on their beer menu; numerous fine selections on tap and all their pours come in pints, unless otherwise noted.  My wife opted for the Guinness and I went for the 32 oz Bitburger; somehow the 64 oz seemed a bit over the top.

Our beers

My wife feels about fish & chips the way I feel about burgers, so that's the way she went.  Her eyes rolled back in her head, so I'm guessing they met with her approval.  But this is a burger blog, so that's all I'm going to say about that.

I ordered their Peppered Bacon & Cheddar Cheese Burger.  It's a "hand formed" 6 oz patty of fresh prime chuck and comes on a "custom bun" (..."baked fresh by Mario’s Bakery and delivered daily!") dressed with green leaf lettuce, sliced tomato and red onion.  Hand cut DeLuxe fries are included.

Peppered Bacon & Cheddar Cheese Burger w/o bacon 

I was enjoying my burger, and was half-way finished before it dawned on me that my Peppered Bacon & Cheddar Cheese Burger didn't have any Peppered Bacon on it.  Nuts!  It took a few minutes to get our waiter's attention, but when I did he was quick to bring a plate of bacon; the second half of my burger had twice the bacon on it, and I had a couple slices to enjoy "straight up".

The less than attentive service and bacon snafu notwithstanding, I did enjoy my burger...very much, and gladly rate it "worth a trip" on my three tier scale of "worth a trip", "worth a stop" or "drive on by".

Will I be back?  Yeah, I expect so.  They have this "Burgerama Wednesdays" thing, but with me on the Eastside and them in the city, it's a bit inconvenient unless I happen to have a Wednesday off.  I do want to try their Kobe burgers, so yeah, I'll be back.

The De Luxe Bar & Grill is located at 625 Broadway Ave. East, at the intersection of Broadway and East Roy in Seattle, WA.  Their phone number is (206) 324-9697 and their website is http://www.deluxebarandgrill.com/index.html.