Redmond's Newest Steakhouse Has No Chairs, and the Station Block Is Built the Same Way
"We've basically wrung out all the cost of running a steakhouse," Kurt Dammeier told the Puget Sound Business Journal, according to MyNorthwest's account of the interview. Part of what he cut was the chairs.
Yukon opened on October 19 at 16421 Cleveland St. in downtown Redmond. It is 1,500 square feet with five tables and no chairs, and the layout is meant to have people stand, eat, and talk. Dammeier, the founder of Beecher's Handmade Cheese, started it with his son, Liam. It is a few minutes' walk from the Downtown Redmond light rail station, and that location explains the format.
Yukon is the sharpest example of a pattern already set on the blocks around the station. Most of what has opened or signed a lease along this part of Cleveland Street is counter service, sized for someone on foot who has somewhere else to be.
Sugar Mountain, the Seattle food company behind Beecher's, Pasta & Co and The Butcher's Table, calls Yukon "a distillation of the steakhouse experience, without the reservation, the two-hour time commitment, or the expensive check." That line comes from the opening announcement EatSeattle published on October 20.
The menu is small on purpose:
The price range is the number that matters. At The Butcher's Table, Sugar Mountain's full-service steakhouse in South Lake Union, dinner is a reservation and an evening. In Redmond, the same company's wagyu comes as a counter-service plate that sits closer to a lunch check. Dammeier told PSBJ he modeled the approach on Raising Cane's narrow menu, and that the kitchen was designed to need less equipment and less labor. The restaurant runs with 10 employees.
Yukon opens daily at 11:30 a.m. You can order to go through its website or through Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub, and patio seating will be added seasonally. The Infatuation put it on its Seattle new-openings list on November 4, writing that "such speed seems inspired by the fact that Yukon is a short walk from the Redmond light rail station."
Yukon's address has a short history. In February 2025, the small line-retail building at 16421 Cleveland St. sold for $3.5 million, according to King County records reported by the Daily Journal of Commerce. The seller was MGRM LLC, which is associated with Legacy Partners. Legacy acquired the former Redmond Square property in a $31 million deal in 2016 and later built the two-building, 623-unit Eastline apartments next door. When that sale closed, the downtown light rail station was still described as "coming."
The building's lease roster since then reads like a list of quick stops. The Puget Sound Business Journal reported in August 2025 that Shake Shack would take the first of four tenant spaces. In April 2026, the same paper reported that 45th Stop N Shop, which MyNorthwest describes as a Hawaii-style bodega, would join Shake Shack and Dammeier's steak concept. MyNorthwest, citing PSBJ, lists the owners' signed leases as Shake Shack, Joe & the Juice and 45th Stop and Shop. Sweetgreen's own location page lists its Redmond store at Suite 140 in the same building.
Put together, the tenants are a burger counter, a juice bar, a poke-and-grocery stop, a salad chain and a standing-room steakhouse. You can walk into any of them, order, and be back on the sidewalk within a few minutes. Press coverage calls the building Redmond's "Rail District" building. The rail connection goes back further than the light rail. The Redmond Central Connector, the trail through downtown and Redmond Town Center, follows a former Burlington Northern Railway corridor.
The Eastline buildings across the way already show what a station-adjacent ground floor turns into. Mendocino Farms, the sandwich and salad chain, is at 16502 Cleveland St. and lists daily hours. Eastline Central's retail lineup also includes Dave's Hot Chicken, Salt & Straw, Sip Thai Bistro, Biang Biang Noodles, MOWOOD and bStrong, a Bellevue training gym that describes itself as expanding to Redmond.
Eastline also has the block's sit-down options, which shows the walk-up pattern isn't the only one on offer. Momiji, a Japanese grill and sushi restaurant with a cocktail bar, is at 16595 Redmond Way, Suite 150. Due Cucina, the handmade-pasta restaurant that also has locations in Capitol Hill, Roosevelt, West Seattle and The Village at Totem Lake, is open at Eastline Grand at 16595 Redmond Way, Suite 100.
A few blocks away, the downtown that Experience Redmond describes still has its longer-standing places: Farine Bakery, Hoffman's Fine Cakes & Pastries, Matador, Flatstick Pub, Molly Moon's, Tavolàta and Woodblock. The station block's quick-serve tenants add to that dining scene.
Downtown Park sits between Redmond Way and Cleveland Street, the same street as Yukon. On Saturday, December 5, the park hosts the Redmond Lights kickoff from 4 to 8 p.m. It will be the first Redmond Lights since Yukon opened, and the first time a crowd that size gathers a short walk from the new counters.
Hoodline's November 4 report, drawing on the City of Redmond's announcement, describes the free kickoff this way:
The installations stay up in Downtown Park and at Esterra Park in Overlake through January 4, 2027. The Redmond Arts and Culture Commission's notes say the 2026 call for temporary art covered both parks and included video art at Downtown Park.
Yukon opens at 11:30 a.m. and is built to get food to you in minutes, which fits an evening on your feet in a park better than a booked table does. If you want a seat before or after the lights, Momiji and Due Cucina are both at 16595 Redmond Way. For dessert in the cold, Salt & Straw is in the Eastline lineup and Molly Moon's is in the downtown core. If you go to Redmond Town Center beforehand, its events page lists Santa Photos between Temaki and Fuego starting November 27.
On publish day, Yukon has been open less than a month. The steak sandwich and prawns already rotate, and the patio is a warm-weather plan. Dammeier told PSBJ he has "no fear" about the concept and said, "We believe in the product; it just needs to get trials." Next door, the signed leases for Shake Shack, Joe & the Juice and 45th Stop N Shop point the rest of the building in the same direction, toward fast counter service by the station on Cleveland Street.
Part of hospitality is knowing where to send people, and that list for downtown Redmond keeps changing. If you'd like a running take on what is opening around the station, or want to talk through how this block fits into your own plans on the Eastside, Michael Nix is glad to help. Let's Connect.
Stay up to date on the latest real estate trends.
Whether it is an investment in your first home, a luxury property, or an addition to your real estate portfolio, Michael provides a high degree of customized hospitality and professionalism to every client. His world-class service takes many forms and he treats every transaction as its own unique entity.