Carnal, a well-regarded restaurant in the Pacific Northwest, is set to close its doors as the owners redirect their energy toward consumer packaged goods. Based in Bellingham, Washington, the restaurant, known for its live-fire menu and sourdough pizza nights, revealed the news in a September 24 Facebook post.
“After five amazing years and more than 130,000 guests, we’ve decided to put the Carnal restaurant space up for sale so we can focus on expanding our premium meat snack line—born in our kitchen—to a nationwide audience,” co-owner Skip Williamson told the Bellingham Herald last month. He added that the brand’s culinary presence won’t disappear entirely: “We’ll be taking Carnal’s food program on the road with pop-ups and residencies in Austin, New York and Los Angeles, while making sure the space here gets passed to the right next owner.”
The restaurant’s farewell message to guests underscored the challenges and resilience many operators will recognize from the last five years. “We don’t give up easily,” the Facebook post read. “We never have. And to all the staff who did that with me, I’ll never forget you. We turned that empty pandemic restaurant into a truly special place—a dream come true. It taught us how to survive in ways we never thought possible.”
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As the Facebook post alluded to, Carnal first opened in January 2020, just weeks before the pandemic upended the industry. What followed, according to the owners, was a crash course in survival. That resilience is now fueling their shift into packaged goods—Carnal has a successful line of high-end meat jerky.
“Let’s fill the reservations this last month and go out with a bang. Thank you to everyone—staff, guests, friends, family—who believed in us, sat at our tables, worked alongside us, and helped us persevere,” the Sept. 24 Facebook post states.
