The Swinery - West Seattle

On Monday, February 27th, Brian and I hit "The Swinery" in West Seattle: 3207 California Ave SW Seattle, WA ~ 98116.

We read about The Swinery in the January 2012 edition of Seattle Magazine, as it was mentioned in an article on the best burgers in Seattle. In fact, The Swinery had been selected as having the "Best Bacon Burger" in Seattle.

So we drive out to West Seattle on our lunch break looking for the restaurant. It turns out that this is not really a restaurant at all, at least in terms of a traditional restaurant with tables, chairs, a kitchen, wait staff, etc. The Swinery is really a butcher shop that happens to sell a few sandwiches and burgers as a side business. Inside the shop there are no tables, just a shelf along one wall with some chairs and a stack of napkins. The only other thing in the shop are the traditional meat counters and an icebox with pops and juices of various types. The cooking is done "out back" on a charcoal grill. There are some benches located out back as well, but they are not covered and on a chilly or wet day would not be practical at all.

Brian and I both ordered the Bacon Cheese burger (see picture) and an order of garlic fries (huge, huge order definitely need to share). The burger was delicious, very, very, juicy, served with bacon, arugula, tomato, cheese, sauteed onions and really tasty painted hills beef. This is the type of sandwich, that once you pick it up, you can't really put it down because it will literally fall apart on you.

I would put this burger pretty high on my list, but still trailing the bacon cheeseburger at Jak's in Issaquah. We decided that it is definitely worth a drive to West Seattle to try it. I would recommend going on a nice day though, so that you can take advantage of the outside seats. The shop itself is so small, that it would be very likely that you would either have to take your burger to go or else eat standing up. With this messy of a burger, you definitely want to be sitting down and have something to lean over to catch the ooey gooey goodness that will inevitably slide off of the burger during your meal.

Give it a shot - you won't be sorry!