Yukon steakhouse: Beecher's founder serves Wagyu fast in Redmond
Kurt Beecher Dammeier's Sugar Mountain group has opened a counter-service steak restaurant by the light rail: two Wagyu cuts, pre-sliced, with potatoes, salad and sauce.
Yukon steakhouse, the counter-service restaurant from Beecher's Handmade Cheese founder Kurt Beecher Dammeier, has opened at 16421 Cleveland Street in Redmond, Washington, his Sugar Mountain group announced on 19 October. It sells American Wagyu the way fast-food chains sell chicken: two cuts, sliced in the kitchen, ordered at the counter.
The restaurant sits in the Redmond Rail District, steps from the Downtown Redmond light rail station, in a 1,450-square-foot unit, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal. It is open daily from 11:30am; the official website gives 10pm as closing time. Takeout and delivery run through the website and the main apps.
How the Yukon steakhouse menu works
Owning the cattle is what lets a Wagyu plate leave the white tablecloth behind.
The menu at the Yukon steakhouse is two steaks. Both are American Wagyu from Mishima Reserve and WinterFrost, the beef brands of Sugar Mountain, seared on a high-heat grill and served already cut. Every plate comes with potatoes roasted in beef tallow, a house salad and a choice of three house-made sauces. The website shows a Mishima Reserve tri-tip; the opening announcement did not name the second cut or publish prices.
Drinks are limited to craft beer, wine and batched cocktails. The room has tall tables instead of banquettes, which explains the project's working name, Yukon Standup Steakhouse, plus a patio in season. Sugar Mountain says the kitchen avoids seed oils, gums and artificial additives, as Pasta & Co already does.
"We worked very hard to wring cost, complexity, and space out of this restaurant," Dammeier said in the announcement, pitching Wagyu to more people at a lower price. When the project surfaced in April, the Seattle Times, citing Sugar Mountain, described it as a beefy version of Raising Cane's, the Southern chicken-finger chain; Seattle magazine reported that the idea drew on quick-serve steak counters in Japan.
From Pike Place cheese to Wagyu ranches
Dammeier opened Beecher's Handmade Cheese at Seattle's Pike Place Market in 2003. Sugar Mountain now also runs Pasta & Co, The Butcher's Table steakhouse in South Lake Union and Sugar Mountain Livestock, the in-house supply chain behind the Mishima Reserve, WinterFrost and Greater Than Ten beef brands.
That vertical integration is the whole argument for the Yukon steakhouse. A group that raises its own cattle can sell Wagyu below dining-room prices at a time when US menu price inflation keeps outrunning wage growth. Manhattan is moving the other way, with openings such as Romy, the new steakhouse in SoHo.
Redmond is the test site. If counter-service Wagyu sells next to a light rail stop in Microsoft's home town, Sugar Mountain will have a steak format that fits into 1,450 square feet; the white tablecloths stay in South Lake Union.
