The Crocker

Last Sunday Jane and I went to check out the New Crocker Museum.
Jane just bought a yearly pass and with that she can take a guest. I have never been to the musuem. Seems hard to believe that I've lived here for 4 years and yet I've never checked it out. This past year it was expanded and improved. It is a beautiful building and they did a great job with the space and the light. After walking the main galleries, we checked out the cafe. I had read an article that said they had one of the best Burgers in town. It doesn't hurt that it is run by the Mulvaney's who own one of the top restaurants in Sacramento.
Jane ordered the burger and I got the pulled pork. Both were excellent. The burger was well cooked, had a nice flavor and the bun held together nicely. Not too greasy and not too messy. My pulled pork was also delicious. Extremely tender and served on a bed of soft polenta. Since it is just a cafe and not a burger joint, there wasn't a lot of options for toppings. I'm not sure that I am going to give it a rating. I'm starting to think the rating part of the blog isn't as effective as I would like. I haven't had too many bad burgers and it doesn't seem fair to rate a full scale restaurant against a greasy spoon burger joint. I'll have to figure that part out. Overall I'd give it a big thumbs up. The price was right ($9), the fries were yummy and the burger was tasty. If you want to experience a little art and have a nice lunch afterwards.... check out the Crocker!

Review

I was reading the Serious Eats blog (if you haven't check it out, you should. The link is on my page.) and I noticed they had a review for the Burger Bar. Kind of interesting because they said close to the same thing I did. The food was okay but the view was great. Glad to see I'm in good company :)
Check it out!

Burger Bar

I spent 3 days this week in beautiful SF. It had been a while since I had been in the city so it was nice to explore a bit. I ate dinner the first night at Hubert Kellers, Burger Bar. http://www.burger-bar.com/ I was excited because it was Hubert Keller and he is an incredible chef. But, once again I didn't order the right thing! What is wrong with me when I go to these fancy burger places? I think I get excited and decide to not order just the plain old burger. This time I went with the sliders because I thought it would allow me to experience more then one of his famous hamburgers.
The problem with sliders is that they aren't big enough to allow them to be cooked to order so they are almost always dry and slightly overcooked. It's just too hard to get a burger that small just right. And these were the smallest sliders I've ever seen! I should have gone with the full size burger and had the true experience. Shoot! One of the sliders was Buffalo, one was Angus and one was Country Natural beef. Over all they were average. The fries were the yummy skinny fries but nothing super special with them either. But... the dessert menu was to die for! They had a Nuttella Milkshake and a Twinkie milkshake on the menu. Plus, a Nuttella burger that was described as a donut with Nuttella in it. I ended up getting the Irish Coffee milkshake. It was Coffee icecream, Coffee Liquor, Irish Whiskey, Caramel sauce, chocolate sauce and Chocolate covered coffee beans. It was heaven in a cup!

One more plus for the restaurant.. I sat in the bar by the window overlooking Union Square. The view was fabulous.
I would give the burgers and fries a 5, the dessert a 10 and the view a 10. Since the burgers weigh the most in the rating, I'm going to give the overall experience a 7. Next time I'll try the full burger!

Squeeze Inn

We hit our first burger joint of 2011! John turned 17 last week and he wanted to celebrate at the Squeeze Inn. It is probably recognized as the #1 burger joint in Sacramento but I'm not sure if I agree with that. The burger is extremely yummy and cheesy. They are known for their cheese skirt. They pile on the cheese and the let it sit on the grill until a harden skirt is formed. Pretty darned good. I would give the burger a 9 out of 10. (Maybe a 9.5) but here is my issue... the place is always so darned crowded. If I have to wait close to an hour to get a seat and get my burger, it just makes me think I could go somewhere else. There are plenty of great burger places in town so it's not worth it. Sacramento is known as a great burger town and I think this one is just too hot! The burger is great, the fries are great, the service is actually pretty good but the crowd is crazy! And we went at 2pm. But the company i was with made it okay. The entire Hastings family went along for the celebration and that always makes it fun.


I decided it is one good burger a month. That's not going to totally ruin my "Good eating" plan. Maybe I just ask for extra veggie topping!

Total score- burger and fries- 9.5. Actual experience - 6. The food carries more weight so I'm giving it a total score of an 8.

New Year - 2011

What happened to 2010? As you can see, I didn't eat a lot of burgers. Actually I ate a few but didn't take the time to blog about them. And getting a 16 year old to blog about what he likes or doesn't like in a burger is much harder then you would expect. He is exceptional with eating the burgers but not so much with writing about them. I tried bribing him with paying for the meal if he would write but that didn't work so well. I paid, he didn't write.
This year, I am committing to 1 burger a month. Not just any old burger but a carefully planned out one. I'll drag John along but not expect him to write afterwards (if he does it will just be a nice surprise!) Instead I'll look at it as a way to bond with a teenager. There won't be a lot of that time left as he finishes up high school and moves into college. Holy cow! Hard to believe that little guy is now a big guy.
I doubt anyone still reads this but that's okay. I'll give it a couple of post and then send it out to the world.
One photo to get stuff started....
In November I flew to Atlanta for a job interview. While there I had dinner at Flipped. It is the new burger joint owned by Richard Blais from Top Chef. Totally cool place, very hip and trendy. For whatever reason I decided I didn't want a burger and ordered the Shrimp Po-boy instead. Big mistake. It was not that great. Plus I got fried pickles so it was too much fried food. I should have gone with the burger. Next time.
eat up and always order a side of fries!