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Dick's Drive-In
Dick's Drive-In opened on January 28, 1954, in Seattle's Wallingford neighborhood, founded by Dick Spady along with H. Warren Ghormley and Dr. B.O.A. Thomas. The original NE 45th Street location was designed by architect Raymond Peck with a look the chain has replicated at nearly every location it's opened since — a low, angular drive-in silhouette that's become as recognizable around Seattle as any restaurant sign in the city. The menu has stayed almost defiantly simple for more than seventy years: hamburgers, hand-cut fries, and milkshakes, with the Dick's Deluxe as the closest thing to an upsell. The cheeseburger itself is unfussy diner-style fast food — a thin, griddled patty cooked quickly and dressed simply, built for a counter window rather than a sit-down meal, at prices that have stayed remarkably low for a Seattle institution. That combination of speed, consistency, and value is exactly what's kept Dick's in the center of Seattle's cultural identity for generations — it was voted "the most life-changing burger joint in America" in a 2013 Esquire poll, a distinction that speaks less to culinary ambition and more to how deeply embedded the chain has become in daily Seattle life, from late-night runs to a genuine rite-of-passage first job for generations of local teenagers. The Spady family expanded carefully rather than aggressively over the decades — Capitol Hill in 1955, Crown Hill in 1957, Lake City in 1963, a Bellevue location in 1965 that later closed, and Queen Anne in 1974 — eventually taking full ownership of the chain and keeping it a genuinely local, family-run operation even as Seattle's fast-food landscape filled up with national chains. The company only crossed into new territory recently, opening its first Everett location in June 2025, still moving at the same unhurried pace that's defined its growth since the 1950s. For a Seattle cheeseburger list, Dick's Drive-In is the essential "this is just what a Seattle burger is" entry — a thin, fast-griddled cheeseburger from a 1954 Wallingford drive-in that's stayed so unchanged, and so beloved, that it's less a restaurant at this point than a piece of the city's identity.
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Skillet
Skillet started as a gourmet burger food truck founded by chef Josh Henderson, built around a single ingredient that became the whole brand's signature: bacon jam, a rich spread made by slow-cooking bacon fat down with reduced vinegar and onion. By 2009 the truck was already well known specifically for that jam, and Details magazine included it among the country's top portable kitchens — genuine national attention for what started as one truck working Seattle's streets. The bacon jam's reach went well beyond the burger itself — a 2011 review called a grilled cheese built around it the best-received item in that publication's long-running taste-test feature, a strong claim for a sandwich that wasn't even the truck's headline order. On the actual burger, that same bacon jam gets layered onto a thick, well-charred patty, turning what could be a standard gourmet cheeseburger into something with a genuinely distinct flavor signature. Henderson brought the concept into a permanent home in 2011, opening a brick-and-mortar diner in Seattle that let the bacon jam burger move from a truck-window order to a full sit-down menu item, before selling the business in 2013. The trucks themselves kept running for years afterward, ultimately closing for good during the pandemic in 2020, leaving the diner locations as the format going forward. Skillet has since grown to five locations across the Seattle area, including a spot at Seattle Center, while keeping the bacon jam recipe that built the brand's reputation in the first place — proof that a single well-executed condiment, developed on a food truck more than fifteen years ago, can carry a restaurant group through a format change from wheels to storefronts without losing what made it worth seeking out. For a Seattle cheeseburger list, Skillet is the essential "one perfect condiment built a whole brand" entry — a bacon jam cheeseburger that started on a truck, earned national food-press attention, and has held onto its identity through more than a decade of changes to the business around it.
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