Anyone who has eaten at Ballard's Bitterroot BBQ, with its lavish trays of barbecued meat and insanely good mustard barbecue sauce, knows these are people who understand proteins. So one would assume that Mammoth (2501 Eastlake Ave E, 946-1065, mammothseattle.com), the gorgeous, brand-new, meat-focused restaurant from the owners of Bitterroot, would exhibit a similar expertise. The menu is packed with 16 sandwiches with ridiculous names echoing the mammoth theme—the Cro-Magnon (a modified Italian sandwich), the Neanderthal (a BLT with pork belly in lieu of bacon), the Hunter (a steak sandwich with salami).
So I walked in and immediately ordered the Predator ($10). Surely a restaurant of this pedigree, one that festoons itself with meaty imagery from top to bottom (the silhouette of a mammoth even decorates pint glasses), would manage to put together a world-class fried chicken sandwich topped with pork belly, Swiss cheese, arugula, red peppers, and a tangy caper aioli…
