Critically acclaimed Ballard butcher shop will pause most dinner service

After seven years, the Ballard butcher shop Beast & Cleaver will pause its in-house Le Beastro at the end of April, leaving restaurant service on Friday nights only through its also-on-site Peasant concept. Le Beastro had been running three nights weekly.

Owner Kevin Smith cited "economic and political uncertainty, rising food costs, staffing, health care and a real shift in how people are dining" in an Instagram announcement. "This feels like a similar time to March 2020," he wrote, invoking the outset of the coronavirus pandemic.

Smith will continue to operate his critically acclaimed upscale English pub, Ballard's Little Beast, which opened in July. He was named a semifinalist for the James Beard Award in the Emerging Chef category in 2023 for his restaurant work at Beast & Cleaver; Little Beast was named to this year's Beard semifinalists list in the category of Best New Restaurant.

"Little Beast is doing good," he told The Seattle Times on Thursday, "but we're the hot new thing, and I'm very, very aware of that." He described "a tendency for hot new restaurants to do well, and then they fizzle out in a year or two."

So far, there aren't any signs of that at Little Beast, Smith noted - in fact, as part of the reconfiguring of Beast & Cleaver, the restaurant is set to expand hours, adding service on Wednesdays and also opening for weekend breakfasts next month.

"We're transferring some staff from the butcher shop down [to Little Beast]" with the changes to the program at Beast & Cleaver, he said.

Of the comparison to the beginning of the pandemic, Smith said Thursday that "It seems a lot more people are eating at home a lot more," and that "restaurant owners throughout the city … are struggling." The butcher shop element of Beast & Cleaver "stabilized us" during pandemic shutdowns, he said. "And that's kind of where we're at at the moment - we don't have time or room to be doing fancy dinners and stuff," he continued. "We need to be focusing on the core, which is going to stabilize all of the staff's jobs."

Smith said that "it's hard to say at the moment" how long the Le Beastro hiatus, starting at the end of this month, might last. "Financially, it doesn't make sense" to keep Le Beastro open right now, he said. "So I don't know if it's going to open later this year, if it's going to be next year … I would love it to be open."

Smith previously also ran 49th Street Beast, serving burgers inside Fair Isle Brewing, for about a year prior to closing it in July 2024.

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