I don’t see the point in going to restaurants for anything that exotic or unusual. I’ve perfected my cooking styles for all my favorite foods. I feel like I’m just throwing my money away.
“Yeah well try this”
I remember my cousin casually saying more than a year ago, linking me to a little market/restaurant down in Hollywood.
Fast-forward to yesterday night, I’m looking over my phone’s google maps, riding through Hollywood
“I mark a star over every destination on google maps I want to go to, but the problem is I can’t label them.” I say to my roomate
“So the result is as I travel across areas I‘ll see stars, like this one in hollywood and have no idea what it means. Is this a friends house? Was this some place I said I would visit? Why the hell would I want to go to a market in Hollywood?”
My roommate starts laughing while I open up the reviews for the place, hoping they’ll lend me some vital clue.
“Oh I know this place, this is the place with the amazing burgers my cousin Travis recommended. Lets go”
So I’ll cut to the chase, here’s where I review the burger. I don’t have a picture so I’ll try to be descriptive as possible from last nights memory and a picture taken from their menu.
The bread was a golden brown Brioche about as thick as the burger itself, I have no idea what a Brioche is but it was especially eggy and buttery for a bread, giving it a rich taste worth eating on its own. It reminded me fondly of Halal a jewish bread I haven’t had in quite a while.
The bun was cleanly sawed open freshly with a bread knife, giving its insides that fresh doughy texture of unexposed bread.
On my first bite I got just a taste of that great bread and bacon, Black Forest it was dark and red in color, burned dry and crispy but thick enough to have a little chew to it as well.
then I worked my way in to the burger, which was half a pound of a “Dry Aged Blend”(their words) which was well charred on the ouside like the bacon and seemed at first to be well done, despite my asking for Medium rare, it was dry but had a fairly complex flavor. This burger was pretty good, as I worked myself in deeper I found the burger was convex! The middle was much thicker and was red and soft like I wanted, and that’s when I got m first bite of the Red Onion, Tomato and Baby Arugula leafs with their Smoked Jalapeno-Pineapple Compote sauce. It was so good, the Tomato and Arugula tasted like they had come right from a farmers market, and the Compote sauce complemented the red onion amazingly, and gave the burger a sweet start and a spicy aftertaste. As I worked my way further down this sweet savory spicy and buttery burger I finally hit the cheese lopsided on the far end of the burger, a Taleggio, it was soft and sweet, complementing the burgers indulgent dessert like taste.
I really enjoyed myself, the ingredients were good and Worthy of a B+Grade, I got to try a cheese and a bread I never had before, and learn that a desert like Compote could be paired with hamburger.
The pep and cooking was sloppy, with the burger being poorly shaped, leaving the outside overcooked and the ingredients pushed around the burger somewhat randomly. The bacon and Burger were both dryer than I would have liked and charred very well. C Grade
I really enjoyed myself, but still I would have rather shoved the cook aside and done it myself, Just cooking the burger at a slightly lower temperature could have done wonders.
Could I have made a better burger myself? Yes, but as far as burgers not cooked by me go, this is one of the best I ever had, and I strongly recommend it.