Seems like every year about this time there's a flurry of blog posts and buzz about an "undiscovered" burger joint called Stanton's City Bites (1420 Edwards St.). Of course, Stanton's has been around forever, but it seems to keep a relatively low profile in the ongoing Houston burger wars. Hardcore Houston burger fanatics swear by it, and it always seems to place well in the Best of Houston® awards (this year it won the Reader's Choice award for Best Burger).
Stanton's consistent placing in the Best of Houston® awards may explain its yearly blast of publicity. I'd never been there so I decided to check in and see how the highly regarded Stanton's bacon cheeseburger ($3.99!) stacked up to the competition.
Stanton's environs are well-documented - it's probably the shabbiest burger joint in Houston, with little parking and no tables, but a friendly and accommodating owner behind the counter. The first time I try a new burger I always get it "dry," i.e. no mayo or mustard. I want to get an uncontaminated taste of the burger meat and bun.
Hubcap Grill has garnered both critical acclaim and a dedicated following of downtown office workers/burger fanatics. But the tiny space on Prairie Street has a few quirks -- the "dining room" has only a few tables, and the adjacent patio is uninhabitable during summer months. Additionally, closing time is at 3 p.m., limiting visits to lunch time. For what it is -- a small burger joint cranking out some of the best burgers in Houston for a downtown lunchtime crowd -- Hubcap has been very successful.
Fortunately, owner Ricky Craig has decided to build on the success of the original location by opening a new spot on South Main near Buffalo Speedway (9591 South Main). And he has listened to the recommendations of his customers -- the new location is several times larger with many more tables, and it is open until 7 p.m. Not exactly late hours, but just enough time for those with a Hubcap craving to pick up a to-go order for dinner. Craig says he will see how business goes and then adjust the closing time accordingly.
After a series of false starts, Lola finally opened over the weekend at the corner of 11th and Yale in the Heights. The fourth restaurant from Ken Bridge, who also runs both Pink's Pizza locations and Dragon Bowl, the long-awaited Lola diverges from his other two restaurants by offering breakfast -- and offering it all day long.
The menu at Lola also has a few offerings other than breakfast, although Bridge and company are only serving breakfast and an assortment of burgers and sandwiches until they get the "right half" of their bifurcated menu ready to go. The right half is an intriguing twist on comfort food, with items like smoked pear chicken with truffle mash, molasses-braised short rib with cheese grits and meatloaf cabernet made of both pork and beef. But for now, burgers and breakfast are the only items available, which is how we came to eat a Lola Burger yesterday for dinner.
The Lola Burger is an ambitious undertaking, with a dizzingly sweet and fluffy yeast roll for the bun, peppery arugula in the place of drab lettuce and a sharp slice of oozing cheddar covering the meat. But past these components, the burger begins to fall apart.
Grass-fed sirloin hamburger steak is downright delicious. No doubt grass-fed beef raised without antibiotics and hormones is better for you too. Grass-fed sirloins lack the marbling that makes for tender steaks. But grind it up, and you get all the bold herbaceous flavor without the tenderness and texture problems. My hamburger steak was a little dry -- after all, the meat is something like 95 percent lean. But if you ground up this grass-fed beef at home, and added a little bacon, you'd have one helluva burger.
Georgia's Grass-Fed Beef is produced by Georgia Bost in Waller County. A renaissance woman, Georgia Bost is an ethnobotanist and wetlands biologist, with multiple degrees from Rice. She is responsible for hybridizing hibiscus varieties from the swamps of East Texas and adapting them to landscape applications. After learning about the medicinal properties of the plant, she began making teas, culinary vinegars, and other products using hibiscus and selling them in local Houston venues. When she started an organic farm to grow hibiscus, she got into grass-fed beef as a sideline.
The burger at the W Grill has a lot going for it. The half-pound Angus beef patty is nicely grilled and fairly juicy. There's a choice of white or whole wheat buns. The whole wheat bun I tried was dense and moist, though not very well toasted. There is nothing wrong with the lettuce, tomato, onion and pickles, but the whole sandwich is delivered in the deconstructed state so you have to put it together yourself. And that wouldn't have worked out very well, because there wasn't any mustard or mayonnaise provided. Luckily, I was taking the burger home, so I could remedy that defect with mustard and mayo from my own fridge. But when you are charging $7 for a burger, your customers shouldn't have to ask for sandwich spreads.
The W Grill is located in the space formerly occupied by Bright & Early Coffee on Washington Avenue. There are lots of breakfast items, and some of them, like the omelet in a cup, appear to be holdovers from the previous establishment. Maybe the folks who ran the coffee stand just expanded the menu and changed the name? The drive-though restaurant now offers Philly cheesesteaks, a Mexican club sandwich, a turkey wrap and a fried shrimp basket along with the breakfast fare. There are a couple of picnic tables if you want to eat on the premises.
In this week's Café review, we eat burgers at Rockwell Tavern, a roadhouse on Telge Road in Cypress. The dense, moist and slightly sweet custom-baked rolls are the first thing you notice about these burgers. Then the never-been-frozen freshly ground beef grabs your attention. The meat is very juicy, and the patty wants to fall apart.
The "Instant Vintage" bacon cheeseburger, one of 13 burgers on the menu, is a stand-out. It comes with Swiss, jack and cheddar cheese and two slices of extra thick, crispy bacon, along with the usual lettuce, tomato, mustard and mayo. By the last few bites, the sweet bun, the three cheeses, and the moist, loose burger patty, all sort of melt together into a mess of goodness on your plate.
But the messiest burger we tried at Rockwell Tavern was the King Bubba, a bacon cheeseburger topped with a runny fried egg.
You've had the fabulous "Baby Goat Masala Burger" at Indika, right? You know, the cabrito burger seasoned with masala and topped with goat cheese and watercress? How did Texas Monthly skip this masterpiece on its list of the 50 top burgers in Texas, while the messy bulgogi burger at Burger Tex in Austin got chosen? It makes no sense.
All in all, nine Houston burgers made TM's bizarre list. They were Beck's Prime, Max's Wine Dive, Mockingbird Bistro, Sam's Deli Diner, Dry Creek Café, Lankford Grocery, Goode Company and Speedy's. Do you see a pattern here? I don't.
My colleague at the Chron, Alison Cook, immediately went out and ate two burgers at Beck's Prime to make sure she wasn't missing anything.
In the June 5 edition of her Burger Friday blog series, also published photos of Lankford Grocery's "depressingly juiceless" burger patties. After sampling four of them on different occasions, she wrote, "It pains me to say this, but at the moment, I wouldn't care if I never ate another Lankford's burger." She must be really shocked that both TM and the Chron's food editor Greg Morago have singled out the Lankford burger for praise since she reported on its slide into mediocrity.
I found it very strange that Dallas had as many burgers on the list as Houston. I once asked Dallas Morning News restaurant critic Bill Addison to take me to the best burger joint in Dallas. We ate at Twisted Root, and the burgers were underwhelming. There are 20 burger joints in Houston that easily blow Twisted Root's over-compressed dried-out burger patty away. Wingfield's is the only Dallas burger worth eating, but it didn't make the TM list. (Is this because TM was afraid to send subscribers to the hood?)
In a previous post about taco burgers, I mentioned I had struck up a conversation with Ricky Craig, owner of Hubcap Grill, and offered my services as a taste-tester for any new burgers he might be working on. This week I got the call. Craig invited me and several other Houston food adventurers to join him for a complimentary sampling of his newest burger creations.
If you are not familiar with Hubcap Grill, it's a hole-in-the-wall burger joint right in the middle of downtown at 1111 Prairie. I'd say most Houston burger lovers have it listed as one of their top three burgers in Houston. It's garnered a lot of accolades and good press. I currently have it as my top Houston burger.
Even with his current success, Craig is not resting on his laurels. He'll be opening a new location on South Main in a few weeks with a bigger dining room and later hours. And he is constantly experimenting with new items to add to an already eclectic menu that includes muffaletta burgers, Greek burgers, and the infamous Quadruple Bypass burger.
On a recent Saturday, our group sampled four new creations from the mad scientist of Houston burger makers. The burgers are described below. Note that they're not on the menu...yet.
Smashburger, the self-proclaimed "fast casual" burger import from Denver, has done well enough since its debut in Houston last December that three more restaurants are opening here.
Smashburgers are "one hundred percent Angus." They're "smashed on the grill to sear the meat and seal in the flavor." From personal experience they are also a bit of a delicious mess to eat, thanks to the glob of cheese and substantial amount of condiments on top.
Each Smashburger will open on a Wednesday later this month.
Two of Houston's best culinary traditions are taco trucks and burger joints. Houston food lovers like myself are often racked with indecision when choosing between the two for a quick lunch or dinner -- tacos or burgers? Which taco truck? Which burger joint?
On a recent lunch outing I came up with the perfect solution -- go to my favorite taco truck, pick up some tacos, then go to a burger joint and eat tacos and a burger together. Great idea. But then it hit me. Why eat them separately? The taco filling would make a great topping for a burger. It's a match made in heaven.
Putting the plan into action, I went to a favorite neighborhood taco truck, Tierra Caliente on Montrose near West Gray. I ordered my favorite, tacos de lengua. For non-taco truck aficionados, that's beef tongue tacos. It may sound strange but it's a standard menu item and very tasty.
I then headed to my favorite burger joint: Hubcap Grill downtown. I ordered a single-meat, plain, with cheese. The owner looked at me suspiciously but placed the order anyway. When the burger arrived I removed the bun and dumped the taco contents on to the beef patty. I added generous dollops of the red and green sauce that came with the tacos.
This past weekend, we visited the hometown of Whataburger, Corpus Christi. The burger chain is based there, but the center of operations will be moving to a bigger complex in San Antonio in the next few months.
The move is a sad one. The chain has been based in Corpus since 1950, when Harmon Dobson opened up its first location there in the middle of town off Ayers Street.
Corpus is teeming with Whataburger locations -- there are almost a dozen by our count off the main South Padre Island Drive artery alone, not to mention the ones in nearby Portland and the two on Mustang Island over the Kennedy Bridge. The chain even has burgers inside Whataburger Field, home of the town's own Double A baseball team, the Hooks, who are a part of the Astros farm club system.
The real reason I went to Pete's Fine Meats was to take a look at the whole cabritos. But while I waited for the counterman to look around in the freezer to see what he had, I figured I might as well have lunch. In the fine tradition of the Mexican carniceria, Pete's has a lunch counter and a grill, with tables and chairs set up in front of the meat counter. There are lots of deli meats to choose from as well as some barbecue in a glass display case warmer.
You'd think a burger served at a meat emporium like Pete's Fine Meats on Richmond would feature a gargantuan half-pound meat patty, but in fact the cheeseburger there comes with a petite little six-ounce disk. The sesame seed-covered bun is nicely toasted, and the lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions and mustard are all properly applied. Pete's uses 80-20 chuck, ground on the premises and never frozen, so the dainty burger still tastes pretty good.
By the way, I went home with a nine-pound cabrito.
Montrose has seen some exciting new restaurants open lately: Poscol, Little Big's and Feast. It's fun to discover something new. But there's also the opportunity to "discover something old" in the Montrose. For the last 15 years I've lived a block away from the intersection of West Alabama and Audubon Place. At the northwest corner of the intersection is an unassuming shopping center. Since moving to the neighborhood, I've driven, biked, walked, and jogged past it literally hundreds of times without taking notice of its shops. It is, in effect, hidden in plain sight.
That is, until this past week when one of the shops' signs finally registered: The Acadian Bakers. This old Montrose neighborhood joint may have been there all this time, but it was new to me.
Buffalo Gap is a hamlet outside of Abilene whose main claim to fame is the Perini Ranch Steakhouse. The current issue of Food Network Magazine claims that the Perini Ranch Steakhouse makes the best burger in Texas. I love the Perini Ranch and count Tom Perini among my friends. But read the menu -- it's not a burger, it's a "Hamburger Steak." It doesn't even come on a bun unless you request one.
The Perini Ranch Hamburger Steak is a half pound of quality beef, ground on the premises, and topped with cheese, green chile and mushrooms. This is what they called a "Top Chop't Steak" at Austin's old Nighthawk Chain, or a Salisbury steak elsewhere. It is a fine Texas tradition, but it isn't a classic Texas hamburger.
Rare hamburgers are considered dangerous by food safety experts. You can take your own chances with a burger cooked medium-rare, but you better think twice before you serve any burger cooked to less than 160 degrees F to others, as I was recently warned by microbiologist. When I said I thought it was okay because I ground my own beef, she laughed and asked me how often I sterilized my meat grinder and what kind of bleach solution I used on my cutting board.
I was about to give up, until she mentioned irradiated ground beef. If you buy irradiated ground beef and don't contaminate it, you could eat a rare burger safely, she said. So where do you find irradiated ground beef in Houston?
Calvin Trillin once said, "Anybody who doesn't think that the best hamburger place in the world is in his home town is a sissy." I think the best hamburgers places in the world are all in my home state. Here's my list of the 10 Best Burgers in Texas.
Hollister Grill on Hollister St. at Long Point is a neighborhood diner specializing in comfort foods like meatloaf, pot roast and chicken-fried steak. Its hand-formed eight-ounce burger comes with lettuce, tomato, purple onion and pickles with mustard and mayo on the side. The fries are of the chunky, steak-cut variety. The ground beef is a little short on seasonings, and it could be crunchier with more char, but overall, it's a damn good burger.
The question is: Do you put this burger in the same category as the ones you get at neighborhood burger joints like Lankford Grocery? Or is this a fancy restaurant burger like the one at Cafe Annie? I'm thinking it's on the cusp. But to tell the truth, if I went back to Hollister Grill for lunch today, I think I'd order the pot roast -- it's served in a hollowed-out round loaf of bread, and it looks awesome.
Should you find yourself hungry while passing through Aggieland, I recommend a stopover at the original Koppe Bridge Bar & Grill on Wellborn, just south of FM 2818, for a burger basket. The restaurant buys fresh-ground 80/20 chuck and has it delivered daily from a local meat market. The kitchen crew hand-forms the patties. The standard size is half a pound, but there is also a quarter-pound version for dainty eaters. The bun is expertly toasted, and condiments are fresh. Add some bacon, pickled jalapeños and mayonnaise from the list of extras to a cheeseburger all-the-way, and you've got yourself a world-class burger experience. The fresh-cut french fries served on the side are exceptional.
The restaurant also serves one of the best corny dogs anywhere, but if I am not mistaken, it is only offered on the children's menu. Restaurants generally frown on adults eating kids' meals. So tell the lady at the counter you promised junior you'd bring a corny dog home, and take it to go.
What $7 gets you: Your pick from ten burgers made with beef or buffalo. Bubba's has a long list of other menu items, like a bowl of chili or patty melt, but it's no chili shack.
Any place that has "Bubba's," "Texas" and "Burger Shack" in its name, along with a location that's pretty much underneath a highway interchange, makes us wonder, What the hell goes on in there?
The "shack" part is not a joke, and while there are tables inside, there isn't much space to eat. We sat down at a table to wait for our burger but had to move so an employee could open a storage door.
The patio makes up for any shortcomings on the inside, and Bubba's would work great for a few after-work beers. During weekday afternoons from two to seven, beers are $2.25, and the selection goes deep into the Saint Arnold's playbook.
The only authentic pineapple burger in town...or not.
Love the hamburgesa estilo D.F. at Tortas Las Llardas -- bacon with pineapple is a truly wacky burger topping. The bun is toasted, and the patty is big and juicy too. I may not want to eat one everyday, but it's an interesting change, especially with a lot of pickled jalapeños.
On its new website, Tortas Las Llardas claims the sandwich shops are a "new concept" offering Houstonians the famous, authentic tortas of Mexico City. A new concept? Seems like Mexico's Deli, 100% Taquitos, and a host of others have been serving authentic Mexico City tortas in Houston for many years.
In this week's Cafe review, I visit Tortas El Angel and other torta shops around town looking for the perfect hamburger torta. The problem with all the ones I tried was the hamburger patty -- it was too thin. In the end, I made the best hamburger torta at home on the grill. I started with telera bread from El Bolillo. Telera makes an exceptional hamburger roll. Be sure to buy it the same day you plan to make the burgers, or keep it in the freezer -- it goes stale very quickly.
Getting your hamburger patty to fit the oversize talera bread roll is the big challenge of making tortaburgers. Most torta shops flatten the ground meat very thin. Of course, they are trying to save money. At home, you can just make a big honking burger patty. Use the cheese-stuffed burger patty if you like.
"Now, Michael is from New Orleans and knows his muffalettas. He knows the difference between a great muffaletta burger, a mediocre muffaletta burger and a that's-for-people-who-don't-know-any-better muffaletta burger. This one was described as 'muffalicious' so I think that definitely falls into the first category."
Burger King has announced that it will withdraw its European advertising campaign for the Texican Whopper out of respect for the Mexican culture. The Mexican ambassador to Spain wrote a letter to the company complaining about the campaign, which features a tall Texas cowboy and a short Mexican wrestler in a lucha libre outfit. In the print ads, the wrestler wears a cape that resembles the Mexican flag.
The Texican Whopper ads ran in Spain and Great Britain. The English language tagline was "A taste of Texas, with a little spicy Mexican." In Mexico City, one newspaper complained that the campaign depicted Mexicans as inferior, while another ran an editorial cartoon showing a wrestler eating a burger with a caption that humorously charged that the ads hit too close to home--a jab at the Mexican infatuation with fast food hamburgers and lucha libre wrestling.
The Texan in the commercials is unshaven, keeps his horse in the living room, and can't open a jar of pickles without assistance from the Mexican. So far, no official protests have been filed complaining about the unfair stereotyping of Texans.
The Mexican ambassador to Spain has written a letter to Burger King objecting to a new ad campaign for the "Texican Whopper." The print ads and commercials, which appear only in Europe, feature an unlikely pair of roommates--a tall cowboy who travels by horse and short Mexican who answers the front door wearing a lucha libre wrestling outfit. The Mexican ambassador, Jorge Zermeno, has said the ads "improperly use the stereotyped image of a Mexican."
The television commercial praises the symbiotic relationship between the unlikely pair and shows the Texan reaching the high shelves for the squat Mexican while the muscular wrestler opens jars for the lanky Texan. No doubt it's the tagline for the campaign which got the ambassador's goat: "The Texican Whopper, the taste of Texas with a little spicy Mexican."
The hamburguesa estilo Monterrey at Tostada Regia is una whopper grande. At first I though $7 was kind of pricey for a hamburger at a taco stand, but when the waitress delivered the goods, I changed my mind. When I took the burger home, my housemates demanded I cut it into quarters and share. Before I carved it up, I threw it on the scale. While the burger patty was only a half a pound, the whole sandwich weighed a pound and a quarter. That's a lot of lettuce, tomatoes, avocado, sour cream and talera bun.
Tostada Regia is right next to Jarro Cafe on Gessner, just north of Long Point. The restaurant specializes in oversize Monterrey-style tostadas. These come mounded with shredded chicken or beef, topped with salad vegetables and covered with sour cream, Mexican cheese and other condiments. You apply your own salsa from a squirt bottle. If the tostadas are anything like the burger, they eat sloppy and taste delicious.
On the subject of cheeseburgers, James Beard wrote in American Cookery, "this means a piece of processed cheese atop a cooked hamburger patty and broiled just long enough to melt. It is not very good."
Instead he offered his own recipe for cheeseburgers in which one cup of cheddar, gruyere, or blue cheese was mixed with two pounds of ground meat along with Worchestershire, Tabasco, minced garlic and salt. The result was far superior to a conventional cheeseburger, in Beard's view. I started out with Beard's cheeseburger recipe, but to gild the lily, I ground my own meat.
Why did I order the cheeseburger and fries at BB's Cajun Cafe on Montrose when they have so many great poor boys? Granted, the handcut fresh-out-of-the-fryer shoestring potatoes were nothing short of spectacular. But the ground beef patty on the burger was too lean, pressed too thin, and overcooked.
The fluffy soft bun and the big pile of lettuce, tomato and chopped onions helped. But the burger still tasted a bit dry, even with pickle chips, mustard and mayo. My tablemate saved the day--he suggested I dip each bite of burger in the incredible dark brown gravy that came with his grillades and grits. Wow! Suddenly, I started fantasizing about ordering a burger and fries covered with gravy.
Or maybe I should order a roast beef poor boy next time--it comes with the same gravy.
Click here for plenty more photos of fried goodness.
The food was carefully laid out on each judge's plate. First up, a beef burrito taco. We had palate cleansers (pickles, crackers and green grapes) and water at the ready. Cameras were clicking and video was running. A microphone was on each of the three round judging tables. It was picture perfect. The wind picked up, blowing napkins and judging slips all over the place.
It also airlifted the plate of the judge next to me. John DeMers watched as his plate and its food did a complete flip in the air and came down the wrong way. "Shit," he said, using a word he'd never put on the air doing his Delicious Mischief show on KTRH radio. Two plates later, his rice / etoufee mixture came winging my way as well. I zigged, he intercepted in mid-air and somehow it didn't land on my shirt.
Right away I knew two things: you can never tell what's going to happen in a food judging contest and how stupid can you be to wear a white shirt to one of these things.
Trainsmash is a South African tomato and onion sauce--a trainsmash burger comes slathered in the stuff. This one also had lettuce, fresh tomato and mayonnaise. I liked the condiments alright, it was the burger patty that was the problem. Out of Africa, the South African restaurant at Sugar Creek and Highway 59 in Sugar Land, is using high quality ground beef for the burgers--I think it's Black Angus. The problem is, the ground beef is just too lean. The burger patty comes out hard and dense and not very juicy.
At the grocery store, ground sirloin that's 90 percent lean meat and 10 percent fat is sold as the best quality ground meat. Don't believe it. Ground chuck that's 80 percent lean and 20 percent fat is usually a lot cheaper and it makes a better burger. Years ago, butchers sold ground meat that was 70 percent lean and 30 percent fat--now that made a juicy hamburger.
The cheeseburger I ate at Davis Meat Market on Lockwood just north of I-10 was just short of greatness. The sesame seed bun wasn't properly toasted and the burger patty was a little dry. I got sliced tomato, chopped lettuce and onions and some fresh jalapeño along with mustard and mayo on the sandwich. The hand cut French fries that come with the cheeseburger basket were fantastic.
Mr. Davis grinds his own hamburger meat everyday, so that's not the problem. In fact, the fry cook at the Lockwood Malt Shop right down the street used to use Mr. Davis's ground meat for the big juicy burgers served at that fine establishment, before it went out of business. I think that maybe next time I need to ask Mr. Davis to cook my burger medium or medium rare. Some bacon couldn't hurt either.
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