Beast and Cleaver Is Slinging Burgers Now

Kevin Smith’s Ballard butcher shop Beast and Cleaver has become one of the most renowned spots in the city since it opened in 2019, not just for its exceptional cuts of meat, sausages, and pates, but for the tasting menu dinners it puts on as The Peasant, the name for the tiny restaurant inside the shop.

The problem is that The Peasant is open only from Thursday to Saturday and seats very few people, and given the hype (bordering on mystique) that surrounds it, reservations are generally impossible to get — the food is so good here, you can’t eat it. It might be easier to learn how to butcher a cow yourself than to get into The Peasant. (The shop used to open as a wine bar serving small plates on weeknights, but no longer does so.)

But there’s some hope for those who want to sample Beat and Cleaver’s menu, at least the burger part of it: This Friday, St. Patrick’s Day, the shop is holding a pop-up at Ballard’s Fair Isle Brewing, a saison-focused brewery that always seems to score the best pop-ups in town. They’ll open at 4:30 p.m. and be selling burgers until they run out... which likely won’t take all that long. The Instagram post announcing this pop-up didn’t have many details about the menu, but there aren’t a whole lot of options: It’s $16 for a burger, and $3 extra for bacon. When you’re sure your meat is the best in the city, you don’t have to think a whole lot about stuff like “toppings.”

Fair Isle Brewing is located at 936 NW 49th Street, Seattle, 98107. NOTE: The brewery is 21+