Mos Burger - Singapore

It's been a while since we posted, but hey sometimes we're lazy like that. This summer Jesse went to Singapore on a research trip to visit a colleague and friend. While there, he had a chance to try out the Japanese-based fast-food chain Mos Burger. The Japanese have an interesting take on the burger. There standard Mos Burger comes with mayo (yuck), chili (yum...?), cheese (well Japanese cheese...yuck), and tomato (yum).The burgers are quite small, so naturally as an American he needed to order two. My second burger was the Yukinumi Burger, which consisted of teriyaki beef and vegetables served in between two rice patties.

Standard Mos Burger - not so great, basically a hot mess; Yukinumi Burger - totally awesome.

Jesse's good friend Kim Huat Goh ordered the Unagi Burger, which is another rice patty burger with sautéed eel and seaweed. The Unagi burger came with a little warning sticker that read "Soft Bones Within Unagi".

The fries were your standard fast-food chain thick-cut fries; nothing much to see here. Overall, Jesse thought Mos Burger wasn't a bad place for lunch, but recommends staying away from their version of the standard burger. Instead try the asian rice patty burgers for a little more adventure and a lot more good eats.

Burger Round-Up

Mos Burger: 1.5/5

Yukinumi Burger: 4/5 (lost a point since it's not really a burger)

Bill's Drive In

This week I'm in Chicagoland and today I ate lunch at Bill's Drive In in Evanston, on Asbury between Dobson and Howard. This place is a classic hole-in-the-wall hot dog and hamburger stand. There is no seating inside, just a few picnic tables in the parking lot, the menu is straightforward, just pick the number of patties and your toppings, and the price is right, around $6 for a filling lunch.

I had a double cheeseburger with tomato, pickles, mustard and ketchup. They don't have lettuce and if you want grilled onions you'd better order them up front. The burger was tasty; they used those thin frozen patties that cook way down, standard American cheese, and your standard soft white burger bun. The fries where your standard thick cut restaurant fries cooked in grease, but I appreciated that they make them to order.

Bill's is a no-frills burger stand that is great for a quick meal. This is what I imagine places like McDonald's and In-n-Out Burger started out as before they lost their way in the pursuit of optimized processes and economies of scale.

Burger Round-Up
Price: $6.25 for double cheese burger, fries, and a coke
Rating: 3.5 (out of 5)

The rating is for the whole meal. Burger was great, fries could have been better.

Town Hall Brewery

Today was a working lunch close to campus at the Town Hall Brewery on the West Bank in Minneapolis. Town Hall is a better known for its great beer than food, but they do make a decent burger. The burger of the day was the Seven Corners Burger, which is covered with provolone, smoked bacon, and BBQ sauce made from their Oatmeal Stout beer. Overall, it's a pretty standard restaurant burger, but the BBQ sauce and bacon spice it up a bit. They use a standard squishy egg roll, which I think is the only real option for a good burger. I'm not sure why places try to improve on this standard with things like hard rolls or Ciabatta; really anything else just makes the burger hard to eat. The fries are run-of-the-mill but have that extra fried coating like you get a BK.

Burger Round-Up
Price: $11 - burger, fries, and iced tea
Rating 3.5 out of 5
A good burger at a good price for a sit down restaurant.

SmashBurger

On day two we found ourselves at Smashburger. The consensus was "good burgers." They weren't great but they were good and I'd go back if someone wanted to go for another burger. Jesse built his own burger with sharp cheddar, tomato, lettuce, pickle, ketchup and mustard. He also got the SmashFries - which are just regular fries tossed with Rosemary, garlic and maybe some other herbs. I want to know why? Fries are good with salt, maybe garlic, maybe. Herbs get old after awhile.

Jesse was most excited about the bun - it was just a plain soft lightly toasted egg bun that was easy to squish down and did not get in the way of the burger. I was also happy with the simple bun because buns are merely for convenience you should eat a burger for the burger not the bun. I had the All American SmashBurger it came with cheese, onion, ketchup, mustard and pickles. I had regular fries and a chocolate shake or malt. It tasted like a malt but the menu said shake? Either way I liked it.

The smashing of the burger when it is cooked is what everyone talks about and how it makes the edges crunchy and holds the burger together. First, if your burgers are falling apart you're doing something wrong and shouldn't use that as your baseline. Second, the charbroiled taste is delicious but crispy is for bacon not burgers. Once I got past the edge though the burger was good and juicy without meat juice running all over my hand.

BURGER ROUND-UP
Final Rating: 4 (out of 5), both Jesse and Eric
SmashBurger, SmashFries and a Coke - $9
SmashBurger, Fries and a Malt - $12

(Cheaper than Burger Jones, simpler menu, easier to order and someone still brought the burger to our table.)

City Pages Ranks New Burger Joints

I guess we're not the only ones who decided to try out all the new Twin Cities burger joints and write about it. City Pages has beat us to the punch, but so far I'm not so sure I agree with their food critic. As a new DCite home in MPLS for the summer, I wholeheartedly disagree with Rachel Hutton's review of Five Guys burgers. I've taken to eating at Five Guys at least once a week so we'll have to do a review of them soon for comparison. Here's how Rachel ranked the new Twin Cities burger joints.

5. Sonic (well I guess it makes the list be default since it's new)
4. Five Guys (even Barack rocks the Five Guys, where's the love?)
3. American Burger Bar (haven't tried yet, but on our list)
2. Burger Jones (really #2? - even at $14 for a mediocre lunch?)
1. Smashburger (stay tuned for our review later today)

On a side note, Rachel's article about Cowboy Slims, the new cheeseball factory... I mean coutnry western themed bar in Uptown, in this week's City Pages is dead on. Even though we may disagree on burgers she can definitely write and review!

Burger Jones

What inspired us to start the Great American Burger Quest? Well, there has been a surge of new burger joints in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area in the past few months and we decided to search out the best burger.

For our first post we visited Burger Jones, the new burger joint/bar near Lake Calhoun (where that god awful Applebee's used to be). So what's the hype about Burger Jones? Well, it's mostly hype. Here's what we thought.

Burger Jones is a sit down restaurant where you have to deal with waiters and waitresses to get a burger. Eric's first impression was that the menu was way too complicated and I thought they had way too many options. Everything is sold a la carte and there are four different cheese tiers (free $1, $2, and $3), really? The menu does have some clever sounding, heart-attack inducing specialty burger concoctions like The Hangover and the White Trash Burger. We went for the plain and basic. Eric ordered a cheeseburger with cheddar, cooked "pink" with a side of hand cut fries, seasoned sour cream (for dipping), and a coke. I got a cheeseburger with government (American) cheese, cooked "pink", with dill pickles, fries and a coke.

Eric's reaction was that the burger was good, but nothing special. Pretty much your run of the mill restaurant burger. I liked the thick slice of tomato and the perfectly cooked medium rare patty, but thought the bun was too big, which made the burger hard to eat. The fries were good, but very thin for "hand cut" style. Overall, Burger Jones seems to spend a little too much effort on presentation and decor and not enough on the actual product.

A couple of interesting side notes should be mentioned. They waiter let us try their "bread and butter" pickles, which were awesome. He said they are prepared with jalapeno, red wine vinegar, onions, and a little brown sugar. Another interesting menu item was the shake of day, Rice Krispie Treat. Neither of us were brave enough to try it, but it sounded kind of gross.

Burger Round Up
Price: $14 - basic cheeseburger, side of fries and a coke.
Eric's Rating: 3 (out of 5)
Eric's Quote: "The veggies just get in the way."
Jesse's Rating: 3 (out of 5)
Jesse's Quote: "Too many options."