Utter Smash

So this place looked interesting. It had all the earmarks of a mid to high end burger chain. I knew it was a chain because I saw one under construction in New York as well as in California. So this time around, it was finally open, and so I decided to give Smashburger a go. It was nice, it was clean, the staff was friendly, the ordering was pretty straightforward, with a handy-dandy screen for you to review your order too.

Being that I'd had no previous impressions regarding Smashburger except for the nice clean look the logo and store front had, I really wasn't sure what to expect. That being the case, I decided to not experiment and simply try their namesake, the Classic Smash.

The burger was prepared as best as it could be I suppose. I surmise that the patties were frozen and held relatively high fat content given that it wasn't really juicy, but it kind of gushed when you bit into it. I've read other reviews that had it being greasy, but it wasn't REALLY greasy, but it wasn't the kind of liquid you really expected or wanted to gush out of your burger. Despite the freshness of the fixings (lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles) it really couldn't offset the overall pedestrian quality of the meat. The fixings were supposed to be some combination of ketchup and something they called Smash sauce, which looked and tasted suspiciously like mustard. It wasn't that the burger was inedible. It was just that it was expensive for what you got and being a burger snob, having had better burgers for cheaper, having made my own significantly better burgers, the whole experience just couldn't be justified in regards to what you're paying for.

By the way, the second thing that bugs me, and this is more I suppose a personal idiosyncrasy than anything else, because I can understand the rationale behind it, is that you have to pay extra for the sides. I also opted to order another namesake, Smash fries, which were tossed with rosemary, garlic, and olive oil, yes, very fancy sounding. I want to give you a tip when tossing fries or any sort of side in a sauce. Know what flavors you're looking for, don't use too much liquid, and if you have an excess of liquid don't dump it out into the serving tray with the food. Lots of olive oil, negligible garlic, enough rosemary to be conspicuous, overall forgettable. The fries were also the thin cut, not quite shoe-string fries, which get really crispy really fast, but honestly, don't have the substance that I prefer in my french fries.

Normally, this is the part of the post where I say that maybe I ordered the wrong thing. Or perhaps that's normally on my Yelp reviews. That being said, given that this place is called Smashburger, you figure that anything you name after your establishment ought to have some standard of excellence, something that I unfortunately cannot honestly say that I found at this establishment. Given the price point, it's simply not worth it, if there's no other burger place around, I'd honestly recommend you try something else, somewhere else (like Mexican or something) and try burgers another time. Johnny Rockets, you have new competition in the overpriced, poorly executed, under-thought burger joint.