Buffalo Brothers - burger with a side of pizza

After a few weeks of recovering from my Houston, TX burger research trip, which technically was for a work meeting for K but let's not split hairs, we decided to set out on the town in search of another burger for the blog. We loaded up the family Jeeper and headed out to one of our favorite restaurants, Buffalo Brothers. I will go ahead and tell you, my fine readers, that this blog was an especially difficult one for me. We absolutely love Buffalo Brothers for their awesome pizza, and by deciding to burger blog this place on this trip, I had to forgo the usual amount of pizza I would normally consume. Sure I still had some, let's not be crazy here, but it was in far fewer numbers. Buffalo Brothers has a few locations across the Triangle, but the Wake Forest location is our usual location of choice. It has a sports bar atmosphere and is very laid back. Perfect for families or kid-free nights alike, they really have a great layout and perfect atmosphere for an enjoyable evening. Their menu has a lot of options, standard bar food appetizers, pizza, pastas, sandwiches, soups, salads, etc. They have quite an extensive selection. On this night, against the pleading wishes of C-Monster and J-Train, we decided to forgo the appetizer and went just with a meal. We have, however, gotten them before on various occasions and they are all fantastic. The fried pickles are high on my list of tasty starters. The fam ordered some drinks and I ordered my favorite local beer, Lonerider Sweet Josie. It has been said by the beautiful and lovely K that I may be having a love affair with Sweet Josie, that she is the other woman in our relationship, but that is simply not true. Although wonderfully delicious, too much Josie will eventually make me sick. There is no such thing as too much beautiful and lovely K. So enough with the shameless kissing up to my wonderful wife, back to why you really came here. The burgers, of course! Surely it is not my cunning literary talent.

So the food, where did we stand with that? The hardest part was deciding what burger to order. The pizza was already decided before we even showed up. K, C-Monster and J-Train all decided to split a mac & cheese pizza. Yes, you read that right. It is macaroni and cheese, some kind of cheesy white sauce as a base, and little bits of bacon spread over the whole thing. Sound delicious? It is. The first visit to Buffalo Brothers saw J-Train eat 3/4 of a large mac & cheese pizza. Once again, you did read that correctly, a 5 year old boy ate 3/4 of a large pizza. It was like watching the Coney Island hot dog eating contest, slightly disturbing but couldn't help but be entertained. I scanned the menu and decided that the Pretzel Burger was the one for me. This is a burger covered in sautéed onions, shaved ham, and smothered in nacho cheese served on a pretzel bun. I am always a big fan of pretzel buns, and combined with nacho cheese this sounded like a combination that was hard to pass up. Once again, I ordered my burger medium, for consistency's sake. With a side of fries, it sounded good enough to make me not worry about that delicious pizza that they were going to eat.

Our orders came quickly, as they usually do, and they looked delicious. The burger looked like it was cooked well, and the pizza looked absolutely wonderful. My burger was, well, just ok. I'm not going to say it was bad, but it really wasn't great. The bun was pretty tasty, and the nacho cheese was a great addition to the burger, but overall it just wasn't great. As soon as I bit into it, I was overwhelmed with a salty taste. Yeah, I know I was eating a pretzel burger, but it was really too salty even to warrant that name. I guess the combination of the pretzel bun with the shaved ham may have done it. I am not a big fan of very salty things anyway, but I really felt like it was a detriment to my arteries to be ingesting this much sodium. The burger was once again overcooked, it was cooked straight through, no red to be seen. It was still juicy, but overcooked. The burger itself wasn't impressive either, it appeared to just be straight meat. You know how you go to a cookout at a friend's house, one who doesn't really know how to cook but wants to have a party? His burgers are basically like he took the ground beef straight out of the package, pattied it up, and threw it on the grill? That's kind of what this looked like. Kind of like straight meat, that they apparently threw some salt on to try and disguise it. Once I finished my burger, I was very disappointed to see how much the rest of my family was enjoying their pizza. Did that sound selfish? I don't care, it is friggin' mac & cheese pizza. Luckily, I have a wonderful family who peeled off a slice and cured my wounded palate. It was as delicious as it normally is, and not salty at all.

So the final word on Buffalo Brothers? You must absolutely most definitely go try this place for the pizza. I can't speak highly enough on this. The burger? Do not even consider it as an option. I'm going to bestow on this one a two Angus Barn burger rating. Not absolutely horrible, but not good enough to make me want to eat it again. Sure you may think to yourself "hey, it must have been a fluke, that guy is a burger snob!" Do you really want to risk it though? The whole "road less traveled" concept is not something that is lost on me, but sometimes the road that is more heavily traveled is more heavily traveled for a reason. Did I just get all philosophical over some food? Why yes I did, because this is a restaurant that you Kant pass up, for the pizza at least. Thanks for reading and please join us next time for more dad jokes and eye rolling puns. And please don't pass the salt.

Buffalo Brothers
11735 Retail Drive
Wake Forest, NC
27587
(919) 570-6004
http://www.buffbrothers.com/