(Image: Feed it Creative)

(Image: Feed it Creative)

The “Capitol Hill complex” food and drink concept isn’t dead yet but it is being reinvented. A veteran neighborhood restaurant group has announced the next piece of its complex puzzle at Pine and Summit.

The Pike Street Hospitality Group has announced the opening this week of Double O’ Burgers, a take-out–only walk-up burger window part of the new project being launched on the street level corner where the former Mezcaleria Oaxaca group of businesses shuttered last year.

“Inspired by the Oklahoma onion burger (OO), Double O’ smashes thinly sliced sweet onions onto sizzling beef patties, caramelizing them directly on the griddle,” the pitch reads.

“Topped with melty American cheese and served on a steamed Hawaiian bun, each burger is rich, gooey, and built to travel. Customize yours with house-made bacon jam, sweet & spicy pepper relish, or the signature Double O’ Goop.”

Double O’ officially debuts Tuesday and is planning 11 AM to 11 PM hours — open to midnight Friday and Saturday.

The burger counter joins new rooftop bar Cantina del Sol upstairs. That upper level portion of the project debuted last month.

Pike Street isn’t being shy about signage for the project. Bold lettering and mural work from Ben Hubbard and Derek Wu will catch your eye. A steatery in front of the counter provides a place to hangout to enjoy your burger.

Yes, there are fries — Crinkle Fries, Crispy Onion Curls, or Queso Fries — but, sorry, no shakes.

(Image: Feed it Creative)

The core of the project remains in the works. Pike Street has promised a full “bar concept and restaurant concept” will open in the central ground floor of the complex, slated to open “summer and early fall,” and each with “familiar ties to Seattle’s restaurant history and a bit of a Capitol Hill comeback story.”

CHS reported here in March on the plans for the former Mezcaleria Oaxaca complex Pike Street Hospitality Group, the food and drink business family behind Agua Verde, Rumba, Inside Passage, and HoneyHole took over the building.

The family of food and drink businesses has been shaped by Travis Rosenthal whose 2006 purchase of classic Capitol Hill date spot Tango with his wife Carrie Rosenthal was the start of creating the growing Seattle food and drink fleet.

Tango is long gone but other Rosenthal venues have grown to become key players in the city’s food and drink scene. CHS reported in 2022 on Rumba’s decade of business on E Pike. In 2021, Rumba expanded into the depths below Pike with the opening of its over the top, post-tiki sibling, Inside Passage.

In 2024, the group swung into action to rescue HoneyHole from a challenged run under inexperienced ownership and carry the E Pike sandwich bar forward in its 25-year legacy on Capitol Hill.

Whether Tango has anything to do with the new core coming to the re-started Pine and Summit complex remains to be seen.

The Mezcaleria Oaxaca complex mixing multiple business spaces debuted in 2014 as an ambitious project from the Dominguez-Perez family and business owner Graham Graham as the sibling to the La Carta De Oaxaca original took shape out of a former Capitol Hill auto garage property.

Now it is the Rosenthals working to fill the block.

The re-start at Pine and Summit comes as another of the major Capitol Hill food and drink complexes created during the Pike/Pine preservation incentive-boosted development boom of the 2010s has closed for its own overhaul.

CHS reported here on the planned temporary closure and re-start of the Bateau food and drink complex from chef Renee Erickson. Her Sea Creatures restaurant group is now working to streamline the business around its steak and red meat core with “offerings at a broader array of price points” and a reconfigured, more comfortable space filling the some 4,000 square feet of commercial space at Union and 10th.

Double O’ Burgers opens Tuesday at 422 E PIne. Learn more at doubleoburgers.com.

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