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Red Mill Burgers
Red Mill Burgers traces back to 1937, when the original Capitol Hill location first opened, giving it one of the longest lineages of any cheeseburger spot in Seattle. That original run wasn't continuous, though — the Capitol Hill restaurant closed in 1967, and the Red Mill name sat dormant for nearly three decades before new ownership revived it in the Phinney Ridge neighborhood in 1994, the location that's since become the flagship most people mean when they say Red Mill. The burgers lean thick and hand-formed rather than smashed, dressed with classic diner toppings and, notably, a genuinely well-regarded onion ring alongside the fries — the kind of place where the sides get talked about nearly as much as the burger itself. It's a straightforward, no-reinvention approach that's stayed consistent across the chain's modern locations. That revival proved durable: a second location opened in the Interbay neighborhood in 1998, and a third followed near the Ballard Locks in late 2011, occupying a restored historic building known as Totem House. Each expansion has kept the same counter-service, cash-friendly, lines-out-the-door format that made the Phinney Ridge original a neighborhood fixture in the first place. Having a nearly 90-year-old name — even with a multi-decade gap in the middle — gives Red Mill a different kind of credibility than a newer gourmet burger concept chasing the current smashburger trend. The 1994 revival team clearly understood what they were reviving: a genuinely old-school Seattle burger identity, not a nostalgia-branded reinvention, and that's part of why regulars across three neighborhoods still treat Red Mill as an established fact of the city rather than a recent discovery. For a Seattle cheeseburger list, Red Mill Burgers is the essential "old Seattle name, three thriving locations" entry — a thick, hand-formed cheeseburger with roots back to 1937, now anchoring Phinney Ridge, Interbay, and a restored Ballard Locks storefront.
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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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