Buck's Fishing and Camping: Buck's wood-grilled burger with cheddar and applewood smoked bacon. $17
Bobby's Burger Palace: Palace Classic Burger. Medium-well with American cheese; lettuce, tomato and red onion, and burger sauce. $6.75
Analysis:
These burgers are challenging to judge against each other, for Buck's and Bobby's represent the extremes of their division. Buck's is definitely high-end casual: a full-service restaurant and bar known for its locally sourced, fresh ingredients. Bobby's is a chain restaurant that landed in the casual division because its price and service style is just a notch above the restaurants I put in the chain category. You gotta make tough choices when you do this kind of thing.
When it comes to the burgers themselves, both are good, but Buck's bests Bobby's on quality. It has a better bun, a better patty (love that smoky flavor) and better cheese (Bobby's American cheese did not impress). And yes, it's $10 more, so you're paying for that quality, so unlike in the upscale division, I can't make a value argument in favor of Buck's in this round, but nor would I exalt Bobby's, which is just slightly less expensive than say BGR over in the chain division, but not nearly as good. But just judging on taste, it comes out ahead.
Verdict:
Buck's Fishing and Camping
*Come back Saturday to find out which burger wins Burger Madness 2012!
Yeah, anytime you slap American cheese on your burger, you're at an instant disadvantage. Yuck.
ReplyDeleteI would agree, for the most part. In general, I'm not a fan of American cheese, which isn't even really cheese. However, I did notice some variation in the flavor of the American cheeses we had, and there were some I didn't mind as much. Although overall its burger scored pretty low in the contest, the American cheese on the Five Guys burger tasted better than most of the other ones.
ReplyDelete