The Fresh Grill: Messy, but Tasty

The Fresh Grill is a local burger spot in Bethesda located in the Woodmont Triangle, and let’s start it off by saying they can make a good burger. There are nine different burger choices on the menu as well as a ‘Build Your Own Angus Burger’ option. We went with the Dragon’s Breath, which is an 8 oz. patty with pepperjack cheese, red onions, charred jalapeños, and fire sauce over coleslaw. Be sure to order the burger medium-rare (the way any quality meat should be cooked anyways). The Fresh Grill gets medium-rare perfect, with a delicate pink center and a solid char on the outside. The burger was barely able to hold itself together, but I’d rather have that problem than have some chef overcook my burger. The 8 oz patty is quite big and delivers heavily on the juices. The fire sauce combines with the extremely juicy burger to make a mess so be prepared with extra napkins on hand. With a tidal wave burger juice and sauce swirling around the bun is sure to suffer, but the levies managed to hold. The bun stayed intact, albeit soggy by the end of the burger. There was pepperjack cheese on the burger, and while I could see it, it was barely detectable by the taste buds. This is largely in part due to the one-two punch from the jalapeños and fire sauce. The jalapeños are awesome. They cut a whole jalapeño in half, grill is on both sides to get a nice char and throw in on top of the burger; great flavour without overwhelming spiciness. That being said, this is not a burger for someone who is afraid of a little heat. The coleslaw manages some relief but the jalapeños and fire sauce are definitely spicy. The full leaf lettuce was a nice and crisp, and the tomato and red onions were fresh. Well done on the LTO, Fresh Grill. The burgers come with homemade chips done excellently. While fries are the standard burger side-dish, these chips are an superb change of pace. The atmosphere at the Fresh Grill is slightly above your standard counter joint. The service is solid; they changed the TV over to the U.S-Panama soccer game. They have a few different beers on tap and a couple of crafts in bottles. No macrobrews in sight, so Fresh Grill gets an ‘A’ in terms of beer. While this isn’t a place to hang out and drink all night, it’s a nice place to grab a burger and a pitcher. The Fresh Grill has one of the better burgers in Bethesda and that’s considering the Burger Joint is right around the corner. If you ever find yourself strolling down Woodmont craving a burger, the Fresh Grill is a great spot to grab a bite.

Happy Birthday to Thunder Burger

Happy Birthday to Thunder Burger in Georgetown. Today is their one year anniversary party. In honor of this occasion, most of their draft beers are being offered for cheap, and their delicious burgers are going for half-price. The Thunder Burger they offer is still one of my favourite burgers, so drop by and take advantage of these sweet deals.

No More Burgers at Toledo Lounge

The owners of The Black Squirrel in Adams Morgan bought the Toledo Lounge in February, and after a closing it down for a short period of time for renovations and changes, the Toledo Lounge reopened recently. A couple of months ago I posted about the changing ownership at Toledo Lounge and about how I hoped that they wouldn't change too much and at the very least leave the burgers alone. Apparently, the new owners don't follow the CBC. The new management just announced that they are doing away with the burger at Toledo Lounge. This is a shame. Toledo Lounge was a great chill place to grab a solid burger and throw back a few cold ones with friends.

Ron Swanson Makes a Turkey Burger

Nick Offerman plays Ron Swanson on Parks & Recreation on NBC. A couple of weeks ago, the Ron Swanson character described a turkey burger as fried turkey leg inside a grilled hamburger. Well, Nick Offerman actually made and ate a Ron Swanson Turkey Burger on Jimmy Fallon. Here is the link to the video. (Spoiler Alert: He cuts it in half with a saw)

Shake Shake Sucks

Make sure the little kids and grandma are out of the room. It's going to get profane.

Fuck Shake Shack. Fuck New York. Fuck the hype.

Alright, now that's out of the way, let's get down and dirty. Shake Shake Sucks. Shake Shack is the legendary burger joint based out of New York (Manhattan if you want to get picky), and I hate every New Yorker who thinks Shake Shack is so awesome. It seems like everyone (including AHT) claims that Shake Shack is the best burger joint ever to exist. That builds a lot of hype, and keeping with what seems to be the usual, the hype came crashing down in a miserable pile of expectations that leaves one sadly underwhelmed and disappointed.

The Shack Burger single is a 4 ounce patty, and the double is two patties which makes for a burger that will actually fill you up. If you aren't a child or a small asian woman, you'd better get the double. The quality of the meat was decent, but the burgers all came out medium to medium-well, which is way overcooked. I would have appreciated being asked how I wanted my burger cooked if I knew they were going to fuck it up. That being said, some juice from the burger did exist, but overall impressions of the patties were uninspiring.

The bun was a potato roll. (Yawn) Thanks for saving me the time of walking to Giant and buying a pack Martin's potato rolls. Not to over-hate on potato rolls; potato rolls are awesome at a back yard cook-out, but anyone in the business of selling food for a profit should put in a little effort. The bun did squish nicely and had a decent texture, but was average at best. Potato roll.

The cheese was standard American cheese which was melted nicely and was probably the best part of the burger. It is appreciated that they use one slice of cheese for each patty, but it'd be nice to be given a choice for my cheese. This is not communist China. Don't tell me what cheese I want. Give me an option.Been there. Done that. Next.

Toppings have to be requested. Fuck you Shake Shack. Lettuce, tomato, onion (LTO) should come standard on every burger. You should have to request that a topping not be included. Still, the toppings were fresh and pretty good. Crisp lettuce. Juicy tomato. Solid raw onion. Good enough, but you don't get bonus points because you'd didn't fuck up.

The line when we showed up was out the door and around the corner (and it's been this way ever since it opened two weeks ago). Outside line (10 min) + inside line (10 min) + wait to burger (10 min) = 30 minutes. Ridiculous considering the

quality of the burger. Fuck those hype-lemmings waiting in line, wasting everyone's time for a sub-par burger. We managed to snag a table in the back of the restaurant; the tables are made from old bowling lanes, which is pretty cool. The fries were crinkle cut. If you are someone capable of buying shitty frozen crinkle cut fries, you've had the exact same fries served by Shake Shack. The fries weren't crispy and lacked any trace of seasoning. Fail. We tried the ShackMeister Ale, and while it's good to see them serving beer, their namebrand ale is a watery pale ale that is way overpriced at five bucks. Go with tap number two and get a Flying Dog.

It needs to be made clear that this is not an insult to the people working at the Shake Shack in Dupont. When we arrived there was a nice lady handing out menus to people as they waited in line. The guy taking the orders was nice and even let one member change from a single to a double when he realized he ordered wrong. The guy didn't even charge extra even though a single is $4.75 and a double is $7.25. The manager was friendly and even came around and talked to us for a minute when she saw we were all fervently jotting down reviews.

Regardless, the experience at the legendary Shake Shack was a miserable failure if there every was one in the history of over-hyped burgers. Maybe I'm missing something, but everyone raves over Shake Shack. It's a fast food quality burger that's neither cheap ($7.25) nor fast (30 minutes). A Five Guys burger is bigger, cheaper, has more toppings, comes with free peanuts, and there is one on every block so there is never a line. The Shack Burger is okay, but this is the DMV and this is Five Guys turf.

Go home Shake Shack and take the hype with you.