On the morning of May 26, 2026, the parking lot at 98 NE Gilman Blvd filled up before the doors officially opened. Cars pulled into stalls under the awning for the first time in years, servers walked out with trays meant to hang on a rolled-down window, and the big orange root beer barrel sign that has marked this corner since 1968 lit up again. For most people watching, this looked like a simple story: Issaquah's beloved drive-in, closed since November 2023, was finally back.

That's the version worth questioning. The drive-in that reopened in May isn't the one that closed two and a half years ago. It's an older one, and figuring out exactly when it disappeared says more about this stretch of Gilman Boulevard than the reopening headline does.

What Closed in November 2023 Wasn't What You Think

Triple XXX Rootbeer had operated at this address since 1968, after starting a few blocks away on what's now Sunset Way back in the 1930s. Jose Enciso bought the restaurant with his wife in 1999 and ran it for 24 years, filling the walls with donated license plates and hubcaps until the last root beer float was served on November 29, 2023, closing the books on 55 years at that specific Gilman Boulevard location.

Here's the detail most retellings skip. By the time Enciso's family said goodbye in 2023, Triple XXX had already stopped operating as a true drive-in. The restaurant's final years were sit-down service, tables inside and out, the kind of place you parked and walked into rather than one where a server clipped a tray to your window. That shift happened during a remodel sometime before the closure, and it happened quietly enough that nobody marked it with a going-away party.

The Ramp Nobody Was Using

When Burgermaster's crews started tearing into the building in 2024, they found something they weren't necessarily expecting: the original 1968 car-hop infrastructure, the covered service area drive-in operators call "the ramp," still physically there. It had simply gone unused for years, buried under the sit-down configuration that visitors in the 2010s and early 2020s would have actually experienced.

That's the real gap. The car-hop drive-in that generations of Issaquah kids remember from their parents' stories didn't survive to see the 2023 closure. It had already been retired once, informally, sometime during an earlier remodel, and stayed dormant through Triple XXX's final years, through the November 2023 closing, and through the roughly two years Burgermaster spent serving from an on-site trailer starting in fall 2024 while the building was rebuilt.

Third-generation Burgermaster owner Alex Jensen, whose family has run the chain since it opened in 1952, put it plainly when the doors finally reopened: "We're thrilled to welcome guests back for the classic Burgermaster drive-in experience in Issaquah." What came back on May 26 wasn't a continuation of what the building was doing in its last decade. It was a revival of something the site had quietly set aside long before that.

The Sign Stayed. Everything Else Changed Twice.

If the service style disappeared and came back, the sign never left. Burgermaster's own filing with the city, submitted as part of a landmark sign designation request, lays out the plan in detail: restore the barrel's original color to its specific factory shade, bring the ring accents back to silver, keep the classic barrel shape intact, and add the word "BURGERMASTER" to the top ring rather than replacing the structure altogether. The filing describes the sign as having anchored countless family gatherings and public events at what's since become the entryway to Historic Downtown Issaquah.

That's two full ownership changes without the sign coming down once. Norm Lipkin sold to the Enciso family in 1999. The Enciso family sold the property on November 20, 2023 for $1.4 million to a local investment group before Burgermaster took over operations. Through both transitions, the same barrel has kept watch over the same corner.

A quick way to separate what's actually original from what's new on this site:

• The sign and barrel shape: restored to original specifications, not replaced, per the city landmark filing
• The car-hop ramp: 1968 infrastructure, reactivated after sitting unused through the restaurant's later sit-down years
• The operator: Burgermaster, family-run since 1952, unrelated to the Enciso family that ran Triple XXX
• The root beer: a new custom formula developed with a local beverage partner, not the original XXX recipe
• The building: same lot, extensively remodeled inside for the first full reopening in decades

Here's how the timeline actually breaks down, using only the dates that are on record:

What This Means for a Tuesday Night

None of this changes what matters for a family trying to decide where to eat this week. The lot at 98 NE Gilman, just off I-90, is once again a place where you can pull in, stay in the car, and have a burger and a shake handed through the window, something that hadn't actually been available in Issaquah for longer than the two and a half years most residents assume. It's a stop that works before a show at Village Theatre, after a Saturday on the Issaquah Creek trails, or on a random weeknight when nobody wants to cook.

If you're curious about the bigger picture of what's changing along that stretch of Gilman Boulevard, from national retail bets to independent shops holding their ground, that's a separate story worth reading on its own. This one is smaller and more specific: a piece of car-hop infrastructure sat unused for years before anyone noticed it was gone, and now it's running again under a sign the city wants to protect as a landmark.

That's the kind of detail that doesn't show up in a press release. It shows up in a remodel permit, a landmark filing, and a few paragraphs buried in local news coverage from two different years. Knowing it doesn't change your order. It just changes what you're actually watching for the next time you pull into that ramp.

If you're the kind of Issaquah resident who notices when a permit filing tells a better story than a grand-opening banner, that's the same instinct we bring to every block we track across the Plateau and the Eastside. Porterhouse Property Group pays attention to these details because they're part of what makes a place feel like home, not because they're looking for a listing. Connect with our Issaquah specialists next time something on your street changes and you want the real story behind it.