Hibernian - A very special special

Hopefully like a fine cheese this blog is aging beautifully, although might smell just as bad. Anyway, back from the dead, here I am to serenade you with more tales of red meat! This one comes to you courtesy of Hibernian. The lovely and beautiful K and I decided to have a night out with some friends. We met up with our good friends and OG burger blog veterans D and ML. Initially, this dinner wasn't intended to be a burger excursion, but rather some other form of food. Yes, there are other forms of food that aren't in burger form. Who knew. The plan was to go to this wonderful Irish restaurant and get some fish and chips or bangers and mash or whatever other foods come out of the British Isles. When we arrived, we were pleasantly surprised to find out that Monday was burger special night! Yes, Saint Lawrence of Rome was looking down upon us and blessed us with discounted burgers. For those of you who don't know, that would be the patron saint of cooking. And yes, I totally Googled that to make myself seem smarter. So what heavenly meat was bestowed upon us? Of course, the lot of us all ordered the burger special.

The menu at Hibernian is your standard Irish pub/restaurant fare. I can honestly not remember what was on the menu because we just looked at the burger menu on this particular night. Going off of memory it has stuff like fish and chips and shepherd's pie. The Monday night Hibernian burger special though is a $5 burger that includes your choice of side. Now, that is the base burger, the price goes up from there as you add things but still will get you in way less than a burger off the menu any other night. K ordered her burger with some cheddar cheese and avocado and maybe something else I can't remember. It is so much easier when I can remember a name and look up the menu online as I write, thus making myself seem much less forgetful. What I do remember is what I ordered. I got the burger with cheddar cheese, fried egg, and rasher. I had an adult joke that I was going to write in here about bangers and rashers, but I'll save K any embarrassment and leave that one go. Seriously though, you can easily come up with your own joke there, I'll leave you to it. What is rasher, you might ask? It was listed on the menu as Irish bacon. I asked our waiter what exactly was the difference in Irish bacon and regular bacon. He said that bacon is, well, bacon and Irish bacon is basically Canadian bacon. So Canadian bacon is ham, but Irish bacon is Canadian bacon. Henceforth rasher is ham. Basically, I made a breakfast style burger with fried egg and ham. Ordered medium, of course.

The burgers came and looked fantastic. It was kind of interesting though, because the burgers were not actually one giant patty but two smaller patties awkwardly stacked. Kind of double cheeseburgerish but more like a split-level cheeseburger. Once you started eating though, it was indistinguishable, as you can imagine. My fried egg was cooked exactly how I like, slightly runny, and the rasher was ham. The taste was excellent, juicy and flavorful. Nothing lacked flavor in this burger. The meat was cooked as I wanted, although with it being two smaller burgers it kind of went back and forth between pink center and brown edge. Kind of like eating a marble meatloaf, if there is such a thing, which I imagine there is not. The rest of the table concurred that the burger was highly acceptable of praise, putting this burger up high on our ratings list. Even the fries were delicious, preventing me from using any Irish Potato Famine references.

So the final word on these burger platters? I highly recommend, gladly labeling this burger with our 3-1/2 burger rating.We wouldn't say it is to the level of some of our higher rated burgers, but we would definitely go there again to indulge ourselves. Especially on a Monday.  So thus ends this edition of Burger Time, and as the Irish say, a turkey never voted for an early Christmas. Whatever that means, I found it on a Google search. So long friends, may God be with you!

Hibernian Irish Pub & Restaurant
8021 Falls of Neuse Rd.
Raleigh, NC 27615
(919)803-0290
https://www.hibernianpub.com/

Bull City Burger and Brewery - A Bunch of Bull

So yeah, I know I have been scarce and everyone has been eagerly awaiting my newest burger blog. I had no idea so many people liked this so much. I'm flattered. But not as flat as the taste of this next burger. So read on to find out the tragic dinner outing. At least we were in good company.

On a dreary and drizzly Friday night we packed up the fam into our trusty SUV and headed to downtown Durham to get some grub. Of course, I may say trusty, but my family may say otherwise. At least it is the most trusty of all of MY vehicles. But that's not the story at hand. We were visiting Bull City Burger and Brewery for one of her coworkers going away party. Never to pass up an opportunity for a burger, I decided to join along with the boys. I had never met this coworker before, but she seemed nice. I am sad to see her go. The restaurant and bar is a nice looking place inside. Big long wooden tables and benches and a rustic kind of feel inside. Or maybe it is vintage industrial. There was a lot of wood so I guess it depends on if you are a rural or urban person as to how you perceive it. We walked up to the front and ordered our burgers. This is where it starts going off the rails a bit. And no, I don't mean try to get my family decide what they actually want when they are on the spot. J-Train, C-Monster and the beautiful and lovely K all decided on the Over Easy Burger. This was a cheeseburger with bacon and a fried egg on top. While this is normally my kind of go-to burger I decided I'd go a little different and went with the Shadoe Burger. This is a burger with Pimento cheese, vinaigrette slaw, and Chimichurri. I had no idea what Chimichurri was, but it kind of sounded like chalupa and I knew I liked those. I ordered a beer while the rest of my family ordered sodas while all of our burgers were ordered with fries. Then came the shocker, it was around $70 for the four of us. I questioned it and he read it back. Sure enough, $70. Now, I really like burgers. I mean, REALLY like burgers. For $70 though, it better be less burger and more ribeye. After the sticker shock, we got our number and went to our seat.

This is where we found the best part of this place. The sodas. They have a fountain with a brand I didn't recognize, but it had sodas that you don't normally see. I don't remember all of them, but they had cola, root beer, black cherry and birch beer. Yeah, they have BIRCH BEER. For my northern constituents, when is the last time you saw birch beer at a restaurant? I mean, we won the war and it took this long to get it down here? I may have stolen some sips from the boys sodas, but I was also enjoying my Honorable Bell's Big Brown Ale. Not a bad beer. Oh wait, I didn't have my beer yet at this point. I was digging into my burger before I had to stop and go ask them where my beer was. But those burgers....here's where it left a bad taste in my mouth. Or rather a strong taste for me and no real taste for K. Our burgers were cooked correctly, but the flavor was off. I think I figured out what Chimichurri is, if it is a garlic soaked disaster. I couldn't taste anything past the garlic. I felt like I was eating a giant garlic knot in the shape of a burger. Now, I enjoy a good garlic knot, but I also enjoy kissing my wife and the more I ate the more I felt my chances of that slipping away for the night. I guess some of the reason I only tasted garlic was that the burger was flavorless. I realized this after I tasted K's burger and realized it only tasted like ketchup. "You soaked it in ketchup?" I exclaimed. She responded that she had to because that was the only way she was going to get any taste out of the burger. She was right too, I tried some of the burger sans ketchup and it was almost flavorless. Actually, you know how you taste something and it tastes like something smells? I once told my dad that my food tasted like Pool City smelled. He looked at me like I was nuts, although that is also a common look people give me. Anyway, this burger tasted the way raw meat smells. It was cooked, but to me it really tasted that way. Or course, the boys both thought their burgers were ok, but they also lack years of burger tasting experience. I also didn't poll K's coworkers, because some of them I just met and asking "hey, did your burger suck too" didn't seem appropriate.

So here's the scoop on this downtown Durham establishment. Unless you just want a beer, find somewhere else. The upside of this was I met a lot of K's coworkers who I hadn't met, so we had a great time. The downside was the price and the burgers. Since this is a blog about burgers and not people, I'll go ahead and give my verdict on this one. I am going to bestow a one and a half burger rating on this flavorless meat. I would say it is about on par with Chuck's Burgers although the fishy taste was replaced with garlic. Now, I do like the taste of garlic more, but the high price on top of it seals it as a one and a half. So if you do decide to go visit Bull City, be sure to bring friends. At least you'd be entertained.

Bull City Burger and Brewery
107 E. Parish St.
Durham, NC 27701
919-680-2333
http://www.bullcityburgerandbrewery.com/

Might Have to Reevaluate

Uh oh, some changes may be coming to the Burgertime Blog. Right around Christmas time we visited the Angus Barn with some friends. The beautiful and lovely K and I split the burger as usual and............it wasn't that good! My world was rocked. Everything I had built up was a farce.

Or maybe not. We are going to have to go back again for a reevaluation. I, of course, will report back with my findings.

Fatboys Kitchen - Fat chance

After many blogs about burgers, I am going to bring you a first. No, I am not going to review a vegetarian burger or a turkey burger or anything. Besides, vegetarian and turkey are close enough as it is. This blog is going to be about my first review of a food truck. Now, I've never really been a huge fan of food trucks. Something about paying a decent amount of money for food made in the back of a truck and then having to stand outside to eat it just doesn't appeal to me. God created air conditioning for a reason. Or at least he invented the dude that invented it. Whatever the case may be, I like to be comfortable while I eat enough to be uncomfortable. So this week we have a review of Fatboys Kitchen.

I had brought my lunch to work, but the appeal of something besides a Lean Cuisine was readily apparent. So when my friend Coco Cricket recommended trying out the food truck in the parking lot, I decided to ditch the cardboard food in the freezer and head outside with a few guys from the office. Fatboys is technically is not a food truck but a food trailer. However, as my friend TBilt commented, it was being pulled by a truck. So I guess semantically it is correct. They had a ton of stuff on the menu and posted all over the trailer. The menu that was handed to us featured a few burgers to choose from, some wings, dogs, seafood, and some other items. I can't remember what the stuff posted on the trailer was, but I am writing about burgers so I don't really care to use my brainpower to remember. I was at work after all, and not like brainpower is readily abundant here in my cubicle. We ordered our food at the window, I ordered the Breakfast Burger which I always seem to gravitate towards. The Breakfast Burger is a 1/2lb Angus beef burger with cheddar cheese, fried egg, bacon and lettuce on Texas Toast. Ordered medium of course. Coco Cricket ordered a chicken Philly, or cheesechicken as we like to call it, while TBilt got a real Philly cheesesteak. The Intern also ordered a Breakfast Burger.

We stood around outside waiting for our food, making stupid conversation about things that I will not care to share. You guys already think I'm weird, no need to give any more fodder. Luckily the weather was pleasant and not the usual surface of the sun temperature that I haven't yet gotten accustomed to. After a bit, our food came out in white paper bags and we took them back inside to our desks to eat. I guess we found a loophole in the food truck phenomenon, you must be able to go

inside after you get your food. At least I do. Once I got back to my office I opened up my bag and tinfoil wrapper on my burger. I immediately noticed my burger was missing the lettuce. Oh well, not like it was missing the meat or anything. It looked pretty good and I had high hopes. I thought it would be hard to go wrong with a cheeseburger and bacon on two buttery pieces of bread. Well, apparently it is easy to go wrong. The burger was overcooked, on the well done side of well done actually. It was like they didn't even attempt to cook it medium. Almost like a cruel joke, like the cashier was like "hey, I just asked this guy how he wanted it cooked, he doesn't know we're going to cook all the juice out of it!" I expected a place with the name Fatboys would have a burger dripping with grease and flavor, but there was no juice at all. Dare I say it, it was not moist. I finished the complete burger and there wasn't a bit of juice on the foil, it was as dry as a bad sense of humor. It did have good taste, but it was offset by an over abundance of salt which might explain the dryness. It was like they were trying to preserve this burger for the apocalypse, joining cockroaches and Twinkies as the only things to remain when we are all gone. Coco Cricket also had the same issue with his cheesechicken, although TBilt said his cheesesteak was pretty good. Maybe he also has a high salt content and will join the list of things to remain after the apocalypse. At least he will have some cheeseburgers there with him.

So where does this rank? I say pretty low for several reasons. One being overcooked and over salted. The biggest complaint is the price. With fries it cost me $13 for this meal. That is a heck of a lot of money for something that comes out of a truck in a parking lot. I'll reference one of our favorite burger places and note that Bad Daddy's burgers are about a dollar less. And they have air conditioning. So I will bestow upon this trailer meat a lowly one Angus Barn burger. I thought about possibly giving it a 1-1/2 burger rating because it did have some flavor, but then I realized my lips were burning from the salt and I dropped it back down to a one. I was always told to be wary of things that come out of the back of a truck, I guess that applies to trailers too.

 

Fatboys Kitchen

No Location - truck only

(919)798-8789

https://www.fatboysnc.com/

Bedford Bistro - reservations not required

Hey everyone, remember me? Yeah, that guy who used to blog about burgers and then disappeared? No, I didn't finally die from a heart attack. Life was just busy and didn't get a chance to do any burger reviews. I definitely ate a lot of burgers in my hiatus, I just did not write about them. Surely you didn't think I'd gone vegetarian. That would just be crazy. Man can not live by fruits and vegetables alone. Actually, he can, and he'd probably live much longer. I'm willing to take such risks though! After much pleading and prodding from my dedicated fans, I am reviving the Burger Time Blog! And with it comes my first new review - Bedford Bistro.

So it was a dark and stormy night, and the beautiful and lovely K and I found ourselves with an available night for a little date. Actually, it wasn't dark nor stormy, but that was a good enough lead in to grab your attention. And having an available night was totally planned as we conned Daddyo and Ma into keeping C-Monster and J-Train. And by conned I mean simply asked. So with a nice night and a planned date, K recommended we try a place called Bedford Bistro. She had been there before with some friends and thought I would love it. To get there you basically have to drive through a neighborhood and then boom, you're at a restaurant. It is right in the middle of Bedford off of Falls of Neuse, so I guess it literally is in the middle of a neighborhood. We had called ahead to make a reservation for two, which may have been the most confusing ordeal I've ever had while making a reservation. The first guy acted like he didn't know what a reservation was, but took my name and details before handing me off to the guy who does reservations who also took my name and details. By this time, I'm sure they knew exactly who I was. When we got there, it was fairly empty, but I still told them we had a reservation. Apparently they didn't know who we were because they were confused until they saw my name taped to the counter. Whew, that was close. Also, sarcasm is hard to relay when written.

We sat down at our table and were greeted with menus and a very friendly waitress. They had a bar with a decent beer and wine selection so K got a glass of red wine and I got a People's Porter beer. Apparently this beer was billed as an English style beer, so I ordered it in honor of the royal wedding. After all, we have an American in the royal family now, so we'll be taking them over for the inside. On the eve of Independence Day no less! They brought us out some of their delicious bread to snack on while we scanned the menu. This bread is kind of a buttery, parmesany tiny breadstick kind of bread that comes with two delicious dipping sauces. Almost worth coming just for the bread. Just as a heads up, the first one is free but if you want another, it is $2.50. I'm not going to say we got a second round, but I'm not going to say we didn't. The menu here is pretty extensive. They have everything from sandwiches and burgers to pastas and entrees all the way to pizzas. Amazing how they can be so diverse. Of course, I was drawn to the burgers. K was torn, as she planned on having something nicer and fancier. Since she had her heart set on the grilled salmon, so we went with the culinary version of the mullet and split our dishes. We would start with splitting a first course of business with the grilled salmon, and then finish with a party of burger on the back side. So with a compromise in action, K ordered the grilled salmon and I went with The Day Breaker burger. The grilled salmon is, well, grilled salmon while The Day Breaker has Applewood smoked bacon, fried egg, American cheese and Sriracha mayo on a pretzel bun. Burger ordered medium, per the usual.

The food came out promptly and looked fantastic. The salmon came with a side of asparagus and tiny little potato pieces while the burger came out looking like a burger with a side of homemade chips. We started by eating the salmon and I must say, for something that is not red meat it was fantastic. Grilled and seasoned perfectly, and the sides were amazing. K even said we should try to grill it at home. She has too much faith in me. I can barely catch a fish any more let alone grill one. Don't worry though, I will not be starting a salmon blog. That would be crazy. After we finished off the fish, we moved on to the real reason you guys have read this far through my ramblings. We split the burger in half and we went to dig in. It looked so good that I was excited, but had baited enthusiasm. The blogs are much more entertaining when the burgers are bad than when they are good. I'll suffer through a bad burger in the means of entertainment. That's how much you all mean to me. It was cooked almost medium, maybe a little bit too much on the well side of medium, but not too much. Then we bit into the burger and angels sang and doves flew overhead. Well, not quite, but it was really darn good. The buttery pretzel bun offset by the runny fried egg and the Sriracha mayo was the perfect combination. I had feared that the burger might be slightly dry due to it not being legitimately cooked medium, but it still had plenty of juice and was far from dry. K even gave me a bite of her side of the burger, just to be sure both sides were equally quantified. Surprising to no one, they were equally delicious.

So how does this burger stack up against the competition? This one is a definitely competitor. I might actually have given it a 4 Angus Barn burger rating had it been cooked more medium. Stacked up against the other 4-rated burgers that were cooked perfectly medium, however, we had to dock it half a burger. So this burger gets a 3.5 Angus Barn burger rating, but it is on the high side of the rating. I might even give it a 3.75 rating if I wasn't too lazy to make up a new graphic. I do highly recommend Bedford Bistro though. It had a good atmosphere, friendly staff, and excellent food. We'll definitely be going back. Don't worry though, you don't need a reservation, there will be a seat waiting for you.

 

Bedford Bistro & Bar
3607 Falls River Ave, Ste 101
Raleigh, NC 27614
(919) 720-4482
http://www.bedfordbistroandbar.com/

Cracker Barrel - if only it was fried

This weeks edition of "I eat too much red meat" takes us to an old family favorite. My grandfather happened to be in town for the weekend and my dad was out and about on the town with him, so they decided to meet me somewhere that suits both the young and old. Cracker Barrel Restaurant and Old Country Store. Most of you are probably away of Cracker Barrel, it is good homestyle cooking with a country barn atmosphere. They serve both breakfast and lunch all day long, and we've had both. I can honestly say that I have never been disappointed in anything I have eaten here. But what about the burger? Keep reading and you'll find out, can't give up all my secrets in the beginning. We got to the restaurant around noon on a Monday, right around the normal lunch rush. Surpringly enough, they seated us within a few minutes. I guess they realized that we were not going to be buying any of their vintage candy or random trinkets, so might as well seat us. Either that or they figured that Daddyo and I might have been hurting their trinket sales by joking around about the random items they had sitting around by the bucketload. Either way, we got our seat quickly.

They sat us in the way back corner, probably another byproduct of our previous country store shenanigans, but it was nice because it was quieter. At least until the three of us sat down. We went ahead and ordered our drinks and meals at the same time. Daddyo got the vegetarian platter with a whole bunch of actual vegetables. Not mac and cheese like I normally get as my Cracker Barrel "vegetable". Pop-Pop ordered the chicken salad, which was a lot more difficult that you might imagine. He had a hard time explaining to the server that he wanted a chicken salad, not chicken salad. You know, a salad with chicken on it, not something that you call a salad but bears no semblance of healthiness outside of the added protein. I, for the first time ever, bypassed the chicken fried chicken, chicken fried steak, or anything fried at all and went with the Bacon Cheeseburger. They even asked me how I wanted it cooked, which was unexpected. I ordered medium of course, with a side of fries. After we ordered, we waited a very long time for our food. Eventually it felt like we were the only people sitting in the back of the restaurant. Pop-Pop had the strange idea that I was in a hurry to get back to work, so he was getting a little concerned. Daddyo and I got a good laugh over that, but we got an even better laugh when a random stranger came up and asked Pop-Pop if he was a relative of Uncle Sam. We thought at first if he was asking him if he was a veteran, until we looked up a picture of Uncle Sam and realized that he actually did bear a striking resemblance to him. Not long after, our food finally arrived.

 The burger was what you would expect to see. Pretty basic bun, cheese, bacon, fries, and a side of slaw. No condiments on the burger, but there was ketchup on the table so I threw a little on it along with some slaw on top. So how did it taste? As spectacular as standard Cracker Barrel fare? Unfortunately, it did not. Probably safe to say this might possibly be the worst thing on the menu. I actually wished I had ordered a salad or a vegetable plate. Yes, I did just say that. And I'm talking real vegetables too. This burger was completely overcooked, like the question of how I wanted it cooked was merely just to make conversation. And as if they didn't overcook the meat enough, the bun was burnt on the inside. Even the bacon had no flavor. I don't even know how that is possible, I've eaten my fair share of Cracker Barrel bacon and it is always tasty. This was like the reject bacon. Almost as if the chef was like "man, no one is going to want to eat this bacon, I'll just hide it in this dude's burger." He probably realized I wouldn't taste it over the charred bread anyway. Luckily, I had two of my best conversation partners with me, and we all shared a good laugh over it. In between Pop-Pop's continued concern over the length of my lunch hour, that is.

So how does this big country plate of disappointment rank on the Angus Barn Burger scale? I'm guessing you can see where this is going. Overcooked meat, tasteless bacon, burnt bun, not a whole lot going for it. Even the fries were not as good as they normally are. Really other than the slaw, which technically counts as my vegetable, this meal was way below normal Cracker Barrel standards. So with all this being said, I have to give this the dreaded one Angus Barn Burger rating. While I highly recommend almost everything on the menu here, steer clear of this burger. Might I suggest something fried?

Cracker Barrel Old Country Store
955 Airport Blvd
Morrisville, NC 27560
(919)463-9222
https://www.crackerbarrel.com/

Pickled Onion - Tickled Pink

After our last disappointing burger experience, we decided to try out a place that we have visited in the past and knew could throw some good competition into the burger battle. On this particular night, the beautiful and lovely K and I were out celebrating the 20th anniversary of the day we met. Unfortunately, I was stuck at work for a 14 hour day and we got a late start to the evening. We almost didn't make it out, but decided since our kids were visiting grandparents we could swing a later night. We were living it up, eating dinner at 8pm and staying out till 11, we party hard. We went to one of our usual places, one that we don't frequent enough, but always ask each other why we don't come there more. This restaurant is The Pickled Onion and it is on the corner of Falls of Neuse and Strickland Rd in Raleigh. Tucked at the end of the shopping center, it is a sports bar with a full menu and plenty of drinks. While it is a bar, it has a good atmosphere and people would feel comfortable bringing their kids there. Not us though, we were living it up like high school again. We even sat on the same side of the table!

Our server came quickly and took our drink order, K ordering a glass of wine and I ordered a beer. The menu is pretty extensive for a sports bar, but we came here for the burgers. We looked through our options and came up with our selections. K decided to go with the Mushroom Swiss burger, which is exactly what it sounds like. A burger with sautéed mushrooms and Swiss cheese on a brioche bun. I went with something a little different, the Hangover burger. It checked all the boxes for me with bacon, cheddar cheese, fried egg, and Sriracha mayo on a toasted croissant. How glorious does that sound. Ordered up medium, as if there were an echo on this blog. Not sure why I even keep stating that. They also had several different sides to choose from, I went with the homemade chips and K went with the onion rings. Obviously we've been together a long time, she wasn't too worried about me kissing her later. We sat and talked and watched the TVs as we waiting for our food, and when my beer was empty the server was there with a new one, no waiting at all. The service here is really impressive, they are totally on their game and very polite as well.

When our food arrived it looked fantastic. It looked so good that K even requested I put a photo of her burger into the blog as well. Just look at those golden onion breath mints. The burgers were large and looked perfect, but how was the quality? Were they as wonderful and glorious as the last 20 years with my soulmate? Or were they as crushing and agonizing as my current career choice? Well, very thankful to say it was the former, as these burgers were some of the best ones we have found to date. Everything was cooked perfectly, from the buns to the burger down to the fried egg and the sides. Both of our burgers were cooked exactly as we had ordered, pink in the middle and plenty of juiciness and flavor. Every part of this burger was wonderful. The croissant was buttery and tasty and the Sriracha mayo was a great addition. I am a big fan of Sriracha, but was worried about an overpowering flavor. I'll say it was just enough hot flavor blended with the mayo that make the burger really tasty. K claimed that her burger was just as equally delicious. I did not taste it though, as I'm not a big fan of the texture of mushrooms. I guess a mushroom probably tastes better than a slug, but I'd rather not eat either of them. I've learned to trust her opinions over these last 20 years, so I'll go ahead and accept her rating of the deliciousness of her meal.

If you are looking for a good place to eat in the North Raleigh area, we highly recommend the Pickled Onion. This burger was one of the best we have eaten. Everything about it was good, from the burger down to the sides. Even the service and atmosphere was excellent. I can't say anything bad at all about this place. We gladly give this place a four Angus Barn Burger rating. By far one of the best burgers in the Triangle!






The Pickled Onion
7901 Falls of Neuse Rd #101
Raleigh, NC 27615
(919) 848-4161
http://www.thepickledonionrestaurant.com/