Bonus review for Brooklyn. Brandon didn’t make it here with us, and we usually go here pretty regularly but hadn’t been in a while. The design of this place is great, from the dining furniture and concrete floors to the elegant menu graphics. A few of the small great things about this place I’ve mentioned before: Bosco Chocolate Soda, free refills, good staff. They reworked the menu recently though; I didn’t get a picture of it, I should have, but this is on it now:

That’s called the Ranch Burger, I think. It’s got ranch dressing, obviously, and some fried onion crumbles on top. Non-traditional, but they do a good job with it. The extras don’t overwhelm the flavor of the meat, which is always cooked right here in my experience. Put together, it looked a little like this:

Their most commonly ordered item, the bacon and bleu cheese burger, got dubbed the 67 burger in the menu update, and still wins my favorite burger there, but there’s only so many of those I can have without worrying for my life. Not that this one is all that much better for me, but hey, you gotta have your limits.

Since our first visits, they have fixed their salting problem (and yes, RD, it was a problem). They still look great, though.

Overall, I still think I prefer 67 over all the other burgers we tried over the week B was here — It’s certainly not the cheapest, but it is the best quality and value for the money. It’s also close to home, delicious and consistent. So, quick ranking, from worst to best: Pete’s, BLT Burger, Five Guys, 67 Burger (I don’t know where Southern Sun fits in there — B?).

That’s all the burgers for now. Visiting NYC? Find a burger place and let me know!

That’s Boulder, CO, folks. I didn’t actually go to this place, but when Brandon sent me his words for the burgers we ate, he sent me this bonus review of a place he went to the day he got back from NYC. I think the cheese smothering the burger in this shot is great.

“This is my local pub, and I have sampled the burgers here a billion times, so I’ll go ahead and add this to the list despite the fact Tim was not able to go and offer a (possibly) differing opinion. The burgers here are always tasty and juicy, just tender enough with a solid potato (I think) bun. I particularly like the mushroom onion-swiss-burger, as the mushrooms and onions are stewed together in some sort of tasty, spicy concoction. The junk burger is also particularly good, as it includes bacon.

“The fries are newly-cut and once-fried, and despite the fact that it’s hard to cook that style of fries wrong, these are exceptional. This particular time at the Sun, on the day I arrived back from NYC, there was a burger special, which was a jerk-style buffalo burger. I wasn’t impressed. I’m not sure if it was the jerk spices or the buffalo meat. Buffalo meat is delicious, although the slight gaminess of it is perhaps not perfectly suitable for burgers, and jerk-style spicing might work more for chicken dishes than burgers.

“Despite all of that, the texture of ground buffalo is hard to match for burgers. As far as the ambience goes, this place is large, loud, and popular, and the hippy-inspired decor is as tasteful as hippie decor can be. It’s also clean and has the best microbrew beers I’ve been able to get outside of the Pacific Northwest. The Southern Sun has a sister brewery, the Mountain Sun (which actually came first), but for some reason the Mountain Sun just isn’t as good. Couldn’t tell you why.”

I got some new shots and some things to say about a bonus burger place Owl and I went to the after B left, too. Soon!

BLT is right down the street from Stand so I had some comparisons in mind when I went through the doors on 6th (b/w 12th & 13th). It’s also close to my school, which I thought would be good if it turned out all right. It’s part of Laurent Tourondel’s chain of bistros which is, er, a little annoying. But the fact that it was very air-conditioned and absolutely blazing outside when we got there, they already had a leg up on being anywhere else in NYC.

B-DOGG: “This is a place that has pretensions at being a hip, somewhat-gourmet restaurant, but the food was relatively unimpressive. I bought a number 2 combo, that included the Classic burger, a shake, and some fries. The patties were very juicy and cooked right (medium-rare), but for all the mix of nice cuts of beef, weren’t exceptionally tasty.

“The bun was thin and tasteless, and the juices soaked through it almost immediately, making for something of a mess. Frankly, I kind of like that, but with all the extras piled on (lettuce, pickles, mayo, onions), it was tough to keep it all together. I chose a classic vanilla ice cream plus chocolate syrup shake, and it really seemed like I could have made it myself out of some Safeway Select ice cream and Heinz (edit: I think he meant Hershey’s) syrup.

“The fries were equally unimpressive. They were thinly cut and twice-fried – a bad combination – and I again expected more flavor. Overshadowing all of this was the fact that ESPN was on, and they played videos of Barry Bonds’ 756th homer probably a million times, leaving an ambiguously bad taste in my mouth. So it goes.”

I had the American Kobe Burger, which is insanely expensive at 15 bucks for a burger the size of my fist. I understand that you don’t want anything to get in the way of the meat on a burger like this, but if they were really worried about it, they wouldn’t have slapped on ketchup, mustard, and mayo on othis thing. They stick the little wood MR pick in through the bun, so when I started eating and took it out, all the condiments shot through the hole the pick made. The condiments weren’t even distrubuted on the burger, and the onions came on — Which is fine, I can deal with it, but that could turn out being a deal-breaker for a lot of people.

The meat, though, was exceptional. Perhaps not worth the money I spent, but it was a firm patty and the texture was crumbly and flavorful. Despite B’s tag of “tasteless” on the bun, I like a good potato-style bun, something that absorbs juice easily, gets soggy fast, but at the same time has a traditional white-bread taste to it.

Waffle fries are a favorite of mine. Most were good, but the bottom of the basket ended up being overly-fried and crispy with no “meat” on the inside. They spice them nice, but they’re about the same type of waffle fries I expect to find just about anywhere.

The shakes were too expensive, too. I’m really surprised I didn’t either throw up or have a heart attack on the spot, because the Twinkie shake I had had little bits of Twinkie floating around in the ice cream. They get points for using Bubble Tea straws for the shakes, which enables getting the bits through — They’re flavorful, but yet disgustingly decadent at the same time. Overall, I’ll take Stand over BLT; they’re about the same price points, and the Toasted Marshmallow shake over at Stand just kills that Twinkie shake. I’ll try it again someday, but certainly not the destination.

The real reason I wanted to go to Pete’s was because they have cask ales. Actually, they have cask ale, the singular, but again, they actually didn’t even have that because it was “too hot.” Actually, it was too hot, and if they did have cask ale, I probably would have gotten sick from it. I read somewhere that the burgers at Waterfront (actually, not in front of the water, but really actually in front of a street named Atlantic, so does that count?) Alehouse were decent, and unfortunately my camera battery died and this pic does not do it justice.

BMP: “This place had the ambience of any other pub, which is always a good place to have a burger and a beer. It helped that I was with a bunch of friends whom I hadn’t seen in a while. I ordered a burger with blue cheese topping. It came with once-fried, newly-cut fries, which is easily my favorite style of fries (lightly seasoned waffle fries are perhaps my second favorite). They were good, but it’s sort of hard to do them wrong aside from under/over-cooking. The burger was cooked a nice medium rare without even being asked, and it had a nice texture and flavor, although as usual, the blue cheese tended to overshadow it a bit. The bun was a flavorful ciabatta and not too tough, which meant that the burger was solid but stayed together and wasn’t hard to chew through. Depending on the price of the meal (which I can’t remember and don’t have a context for, anyway, not living in NYC), this could be a very decent burger at a very decent place.”

Reggae music! Also: HP Sauce. I think I’ve mentioned before that I love sauces of all kinds, and HP and HP Curry sauce are no exceptions. They also had some kind of barbecue sauce that was pretty tasty. I don’t remember the fries being exceptional, and judging by the picture, they look soggy, but honestly, I don’t really remember.

The burger was a half-pounder, which is almost too much; the patty was super-thick but cooked per request at medium-rare. I’m still no fan of a brioche bun, even though this was soft and not obtrusive, there’s something about the waxy top that I’m never happy about. From the sounds of it, we may seem like big spenders, but we’re not, even though I don’t know how much we spent for these burgers. The thing is, we ain’t cheap so we don’t know how much it cost. My beer was tasty, if a little sweet. They have some $15 beers there that have some crazy-high alcohol content as well; what I’ve noticed most about NYC bars is that, though not the land of microbrews that the NW is, they have a huge assortment of European (Belgium, mostly) beers at most of the good pubs.

I’d go back here if there were cask ales, but the Union Smith Cafe, although inconsistent at times, makes a better burger overall and is closer to the digs.

Five Guys Famous Burger and Fries was our first stop last week. It’s a staple in DC, I hear, and mostly along the Eastern Seaboard. In fact, a quick glance at all the locations over at fiveguys.com indicates that they’ve pretty much got the East Coast covered. Our particular location was a nice jaunt from homebase, over in Brooklyn Heights.

Here’s what BMP has to say about it (also, his pictures, which are better than mine):

“I like a burger place that looks like a fast food joint but isn’t. The best burgers in Bellingham were sold at drive-in called Boomer’s, which had exceptional waffle fries and very good hard shakes. This place has an ambience different than Boomer’s, but still feels like a fast food place. Despite that, the burgers are cooked to order, and the usual trappings of fast food – low-quality toppings and thin patties – are absent. I ordered a normal (i.e two-patty) cheeseburger, and we shared a large fries.”

“The meal comes in a paper bag, and apparently the Five Guys’ signature is to fill the bag with extra fries on top of whatever container they are supposed to come in. I’m into it. The fries were twice-fried and very good. The patties were well-done, which I’m clearly not a big fan of, but we think we might have missed out on the point during ordering where we could have asked for the patties medium rare. As they were, the patties were still very tasty, if not juicy enough, and the normal well-cooked-beef-taste was remarkably absent despite the well-doneness of the patties. I also remember liking the bun, although I don’t remember why. I would go here again for lunch if I lived/worked in the area.”

I think the fact that they were playing Rush (seriously, the band must have traveled into the past to play their wicked technical riffs knowing that someday we would be using their awesomeness in Guitar Hero 2) and some Phil Collins gives them a thumbs-up on ambiance. In addition, they have that huge box of peanuts they want you to eat and throw the shells on the floor. I’ve seen this kind of thing before at several pub-style places, but never in a typical fast-food type store front. We didn’t have any peanuts, but the option is a plus.

Every burger at Five Guys is a double, which is not my mainstay burger; I like to have an even balance, but I enjoy it every now and then. Patties were cooked through, but they were crispy on the outside and still tend on the in. My cheese was dripping, which is the kind of thing I love, and it comes wrapped in a tight light aluminum foil package, so when you break it open, it’s still super-hot. I burned my tongue, which I’m cool with. The bun was good, it had enough give (and I imagine the time it spent trapped in the foil with the super-hot patties had something to do with it) made a clean eat. I bet if you let it go for a while, the tomatoes would get too hot and shrivel a bit, though, so best enjoyed soon thereafter — Like any burger, right?

The fries were my style: skins, twice-fried, not too salty, crispy on the outside and soft on the ins, just like the burger. Also, there were too many to eat them all, which is always good, but not in a wasteful/guilty there’s-people-starving gluttonous kind of way.

Overall, I think not a destination place, but a definite “I’m in the neighborhood or I’m passing through I better stop there” kind of way. I feel similarly about Oregon’s Burgerville. I don’t remember how much it is, either, but probably comparable. Another thing: Free refills! I don’t know about everyone else, but have you notice the dearth of refills in NYC? The only other place I can think of (logistics be damned) that does them is 67 Burger, and then I think it may only be one refill, but who knows.

We took a long and really freaking hot walk across the Brooklyn Bridge afterwards and almost passed out in City Hall Park. A few days came between our next burger, which was probably a good thing. Next: Pete’s Waterfront Ale House — Really in front of the water? No.

To take a break from the vacation stuff and because b-dogg’s in town, we’re going to hit a few new burger places in town and offer up some reviews. We’re shooting for four burgers in four days and are rounding out the list as I write. It’s a sickeningly sticky 96º out here, so we’re trying to stay cool. If anyone has some suggestions for burger places around here, hit us up soon. But we have a long list already, so… Yeah.