Metropolitan Grill
The Works burger costs $26 and only exists on the bar and lunch menus. Jeff's note on the place is four words long: go for the secret burger.
Why go
The Met opened in 1983 in a building that went up in 1903 at Second and Marion, and Providence Cicero found a tuxedoed maitre d' still carving chateaubriand tableside when she went back in 2015.1 Mahogany and brass run the room, under a twenty-foot ceiling, with booths you disappear into.1 The beef is the argument. Cicero ate a 25-ounce dry-aged prime porterhouse from Double R Ranch in Washington, and the kitchen had by then added American wagyu from Snake River Farms in Idaho and Japanese Ohmi A5.1 The wine list runs 66 pages and the house keeps six sommeliers, three of them on the floor any given night.1
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Works burger. Mesquite grilled, cheddar and Swiss, caramelized onions, house Thousand Island, lettuce and tomato, fries, $26 on the May 2026 bar menu.3 The April 2026 lunch menu carries it too.4 The dinner menu from the same month carries no burger at all, which is what Jeff means by secret.5
- Order: the top sirloin before the wagyu. Aimee Rizzo wrote for The Infatuation that the kitchen cooks it well enough that the fancier Japanese cuts are optional.2
- Order: the dry-aged prime porterhouse if somebody else is paying.1
- Order: the hot apple pie. Maitre d' Craig Summers flambes the fruit with butter, brown sugar and spices at the table.1
- Avoid: the prime rib. Cicero found it
nicely crusted
and then mushy,rosy but oddly bloodless,
under a hyper-salty au jus.1 - Avoid: the mac and cheese. Rizzo called it
The Met's only significant miss
and said the sauce and the pasta never get the chance to mingle.2
What locals & experts say
- Aimee Rizzo, The Infatuation, 21 February 2025, 8.0:
Steaks are cooked so well (in quality, not temperature) that you'd be in good hands choosing a humble sirloin over flashier wagyu.
She wrote that the roomstill holds up
after four decades.2 - Providence Cicero, The Seattle Times, 23 April 2015, three stars:
The prime porterhouse delivered everything I want from a steak: copious juices seeped from a warm, red (medium-rare) center, a hint of smoke clung to the charred exterior, and each bite delivered an assertive beefiness.
1 - Cicero on the room, same review: she noted the sommelier recommended a $95 cabernet and
told me nothing about the wine,
and read it as a lost chance to teach a customer something.1
Good to know
- Lunch is the way in. Cicero's line was that a steak dinner for two with the works easily exceeds the average monthly car payment. She priced the lunch soups, sandwiches and entrees as the way in for the rest of us.1 The house now runs lunch Tuesday to Friday, 11am to 3pm, in the bar only, and takes no bookings for it.6
- Service charge: 20 percent is added to every check.3
- Hygiene: King County inspected on 10 June 2026 at 0 violation points, rolling grade Good.7
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: Go for the secret burger.
Verdict
should-visit — Two critics have judged this kitchen and both put the steak at the center. Providence Cicero gave the room three stars in 2015 and wrote the porterhouse up in the terms a cook checks, juice, char and beef flavor, off 25-ounce dry-aged prime from Double R Ranch in Washington. Aimee Rizzo scored it 8.0 for The Infatuation in February 2025 and made the sharper point, that the sirloin is cooked well enough you do not need the wagyu. Each of them named a fault too, the mushy prime rib for Cicero and the mac and cheese for Rizzo, which is why the praise counts for something. It holds at this rung because the argument is beef and service in a mahogany room, and none of that is something you can only get here.