Vegas-Esque Splashy Burgers and French Toast Have Arrived in Seattle

The ube French toast in question.

If you have friends in Las Vegas maybe you’ve seen them post photos of Truffles N Bacon. The restaurant serves what its website describes as “American comfort food with a twist,” the twist being a kind of Vegasian maximalism. There’s a dish with ube cream cheese sandwiched inside a tall stack of bright green pandan pancakes. One burger has tater tots in it, another one is topped with a mac and cheese patty. There’s bacon jam — Truffles N Bacon’s signature condiment — everywhere. This is food untouched by diet culture, food whose target audience is TV producers; Truffles N Bacon has been Instagrammed a million times but also featured on the Food Network’s Ginormous Food Show and Netflix’s Fresh, Fried and Crispy. Owner Jacqueline Lim isn’t a celebrity chef, but her food has become at least a micro celebrity.

And now that food has come to Seattle, courtesy of Lim’s daughter, Roxanne Brooks. She just opened Barrel & Bacon in Interbay in the former home of Champagne Diner, a restaurant that shares a lot of Truffles N Bacon’s DNA, some of the same dishes, and its penchant for bacon jam.

Brooks and her husband own the mobile bartending company Sip Tap Tow and have mulled the idea of doing something with Truffles N Bacon for a long time. “We’ve honestly just always talked about opening something up together, and then the opportunity came,” Brooks says.

Champagne Diner had closed in April after five years in what seems like an unlikely location on a not-particularly-walkable stretch of Elliot Avenue, down the street from Holy Mountain Brewing and Old Log Cabin Distillery. If you’ve driven from Ballard to Pike Place Market, you’ve passed by the storefront, even if you didn’t notice it. “We don’t have a lot of curb appeal,” Brooks admits. When the couple viewed the space, however, “we just had this vision.”

The big difference between Barrel & Bacon and Truffles N Bacon is that the Vegas restaurant does breakfast and lunch while Barrel & Bacon is a drinks-and-dinner spot. While Brooks has taken some of her mom’s “greatest hits” — the mac and cheese burger is there, don’t worry, or maybe worry — she’s also tweaked the concept to include more “little bites” that could accompany a happy hour. And while the made-for-Instagram ube breakfast aspect of Truffles has made it to Barrel in the form of ube French toast, that dish is now a dessert.

But the thing Brooks sounds the most excited about isn’t an import from Truffles but an original dish, the katsu fried chicken and waffles. “Everybody that’s tried it is like, This is the best chicken and waffles in Washington,” she says. Whoa, she’s going to claim best in the state? “Okay, fine, Seattle.”

Barrel & Bacon is located at 945 Elliott Avenue and open from 4 to 10 p.m. Thursdays through Mondays. Parking is available in a lot.