run by four interchangeable lumbersexual white guys in their mid 20s who are having the time of their lives and one white chick in her late 20s who is just so over it.
Lol that is so spot-on I can't believe the parallels never occurred to me.
One exception though, I really had good burgers in such a place in Haarlem / NL.
There's a bar here with that aesthetic. They do serve ok burgers at slightly reasonable prices, but the secret is to become friends with the cooks. Then tell them that you don't care what the upcharge is, but you want them to make you the burger they'd want and to have fun with it.
Now I can go in and say "Tell them TexasDrunk wants whatever burger they want to send out" and 9 out of 10 times I get a burger that's delicious (and sometimes insane). Usually they just charge me the regular burger price.
I don't do it often, but I got good friends and good burgers out of it.
Hell yeah! When I worked as a server, I would ask the cooks to make me a burger of the day for my lunch break. There was no "burger of the day" they just went wild and often times they required multiple "load bearing straws".
People who go into cooking generally enjoy getting to be creative. I love those insane creations that require load bearing anything (although I don't think I've seen straws, usually it's toothpicks, skewers, or pickle spears).
My absolute favorite wasn't the tastiest but it was definitely the coolest. The guy made a pretty standard bacon jalapeno burger, added some house made barbecue sauce, cut it into pieces, skewered it, and served it as the garnish for a pitcher of micheladas.
Note: A michelada is kind of what you'd get if a bloody Mary went to Mexico on vacation and added beer and spices.
I went to a place like this once. Had a bison burger (?) and it was avtually fucking delicious. The fries were just "fries" but they weren't bad in any way. Above average in flavor and consistency.
I'm guessing most places like this are garbage and the one time I went, I got lucky.
Most of them are mediocre. Most burger places were mediocre, and then the American gastropub trend saw burgers being made nice as opposed to diner food or bar food. They could also charge more money because they were making nicer food.
Eventually a bunch of the mediocre places shifted to try to also be nice, but mostly just increased prices, changed decor, and started using the word aioli more than mayo. Oh, and pretzel buns on burgers that got taller without being bigger and are cumbersome to eat.
In the plus side, if you like a Swiss burger with a garlic aioli, a burger with a fried egg on it, or a burger with 2 pieces of bacon, a spicy BBQ sauce, and fried onion strings and you're in the mood for some fries with bits of peel on them and a garlic Parmesan butter, then you know exactly what they're going to put in from of you and exactly what it'll taste like.
Mediocre. Not bad, but definitely not the best you've ever had.
So the city I live in has a few of these and they're some of the best burgers in town, for fairly reasonable prices.
There's a fucking war on here for the best burger and I'm so happy for it. We don't fuck around with burgers.
They're so good and reasonably priced that the first time I saw this meme I was a little confused. Like yeah the aesthetic is kinda lame but that doesn't change the food. Maybe the stools aren't comfortable but like, there are regular tables. Like what's the problem??
Then I went to another city.
My friends, I am so, so, sorry. You don't deserve this. Good burgers aren't hard, they're really not. Just stay home, invest in a griddle. Even if it's just a small one for your stove top, you can make better burgers at home. Make friends with a local butcher, he won't steer you wrong. I don't know what caused that trend but I know the only way to stop it is to stop going.
My city has both, and they're decorated the same. I just wonder whether a really good burger place did this first and then crappy ones showed up to copy the decor and forgot to make the food good.
Worst place I ate brought the raw burger to you next to a boiling hot slab of rock. I was expected to cook my own burger the way I liked it. Well fuck you, I'm paying you to cook my meal. Plus it just seemed disgusting to have raw meat at the table anyway
Don't forget the smugness. These types of places always have such smug staffing, like they think they shit gold or something. It's like bitch please, you're demanding someone pay a day's wage for you to fuck up ground beef. Fuck off out of here with your foofoo bullshit burger.
Copy + paste small business tyrant investment. Like a ghost kitchen. They all just copy each other because it returns a consistent profit.
There is probably some kind if grotesque item in the menu as a "draw", too. The Tower of Cheese. The Bacon Bun. The [town name] challenge, a dish made of 34 kinds of flesh. Get in here, techbros! Get your grub.
Facts. We have a burger place like this that people love for some reason, but I swear they most the mid-quality burgers for $20+. It's crazy that people keep going there, imo.
The most mediocre dining experience (for the money) I've ever had was at a restaurant called "Smallwares." Emphasis on small, it turns out. Case in point, we ordered duck breast, which cost a fair bit. I was picturing at least a fair amount, but it was the smallest smidgen slivered up with a dollop of sauce. It was the same with every dish, high prices for not much food.
Sure there were other places that had worse food. One remote dinner lacked any fresh food, but you can't really help that when you're in the middle of nowhere. But never have I felt like I was being fed by Famine from Good Omens.
A quite big Döner Brand in Germany(Berlin Döner) has shops like this and they aren't even that bad. They aren't outstandingly god but also not bad. Its maybe a bit overpriced for 6€(at least in my city it costs 6€).
There was a place like this near my old work and my boss would often offer to pay. I naturally ordered a couple mediocre burgers and overly seasoned truffle fries with sage for some reason.
Thankfully there was a similar coffee place next door, but that's a good thing in their case (that coffee was fire)