Chicago’s Best Burgers, Brandon
Where do you go when you get that craving for seared ground beef and melty cheese in a bun? Do you head to the local Choke N’ Puke, or do you find that prized destination, that one place where they do it right every time, treating the simple hot sandwich with the honor and love it deserves, not merely in exchange for your dough, but because they appreciate a good hamburger and enjoy selling them to those who share the love?
To satisfy the powerful hankerin’ you first have to find that beloved spot for burger vittles, and that can be a chore these days in a world full of options. Sure, it can be fun to bounce from shack to shack and joint to joint, but unless you’ve got a bottomless bank account and an atomic metabolism, there’s a limit to how many tests can be made. The decision-making process needs streamlining.
Experience has taught me that from fast food to fine dining, a good burger that balances the subjective and quantitative—quality, quantity, taste, value, and price—winds up being in the mid-range price category. As prices rise beyond that I have yet to find a burger whose taste, quality, and quantity are worth the added expense. There are exceptions, of course. In short, I’ve found no marginal value in a burger over $8.
When I (we) really get a craving, it’s usually going to be satisfied at one of the burger specific joints. Let’s face it, it’s what they do and they’ve got the system designed to focus on the main thing: hamburgers. Their cooks aren’t distracted by specials of the day, batch frying chicken, or grilling baby back ribs. They fry potatoes, prep condiments, fill dispensers, form patties and sear the patties on a grill. Burgers are what they do, so it ought to be great, but if it’s not, then it’s easy to scratch them from your list. There’s no excuse for a shite burger when it’s literally all you do.
Though we’ve had several adequate burgers since moving to Florida, we hadn’t yet tried a burger-specific joint here in the greater Brandon area. On one Thursday morning, I set my wife’s taste buds a tingling with the suggestion and then let my fingers do the walking through the interwebs for what’s what in the local world of burgers.
I’m focused here on local establishments only. An operation with two or three locations is fine, but it must be a local business, not a national chain. Companies like Wayback and Five Guys are just fine and may just wind up at the top of the pile after I try the local offerings, but the opportunity to have my mind blown exists only in independent shops.
And no to Grief O’Grady’s.
Taking TripAdvisor with a grain of salt and taking Yelp with a sack of Diamond Crystals, I compiled a list of potential subjects and settled on Chicago’s Best Burgers. My reasons? It is not a chain, it’s nearly all they do (they do serve wings and alternative patties), they received consistently good reviews, and they were close to MD Oriental Market and Aldi (today was grocery shopping day).
Their website indicated that they use 100% grass-fed beef, but did not mention whether it is fresh or frozen. It was not a make or break issue. I’ve had great burgers from frozen, and I’ve had shite burgers from fresh grass fed beef. (I don’t consider health when talking burgers.)
We hopped in the sporty little runabout and negotiated the afternoon traffic knots to Providence Square shopping center in the south-west corner of Providence Rd. and Brandon Blvd. Depending on your direction of approach, this is a tricky intersection to navigate.
Chicago’s Best Burgers
1925A Brandon Blvd.
Brandon, FL 33511
Phone: (813) 654-3232
Hours:
Monday to Saturday – 11:00 A.M. to 9:00 P.M.
Sunday – Closed
chicagosbestburgers.com/
We went in and I was suddenly in a familiar place. Either by coincidence, the practical matter of fact, or by direct mimicry, Chicago’s Best layout, and system looked incredibly similar to Wayback Burgers (a Connecticut franchise present in Florida that started as a mom-and-pop in my home state of Delaware). I like Wayback, as chains go, and my optimism improved a couple notches. As a customer completed his order, we grabbed a laminated menu from the counter and looked it over. Chicago’s Best menu isn’t strictly hamburgers, but it is their primary focus, though the distraction could mean doom.
The menu opens with their specialty burger offerings: thirteen pre-configured combinations that are likely to satisfy most tastes. All specialty burgers are priced at $9.99 (“Make it a double for addt’l $3.49”), a salty number in comparison to similar competitors, but many of the builds included premium toppings like bacon, fried eggs, avocado, and grilled onion so the value could be in there, if you look for it. However, a build your own basic cheeseburger can be had for $7.99 which fits just inside my value window.
I like to make a basic cheeseburger my first selection at a new place, with American cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle, ketchup, and mustard (LTOPKM). This, to me, is the classic build and the benchmark to which I judge a place. Chicago’s Best had such a burger on its specialty menu, but with bacon and mayo. I bit. What the hell, rules are made to be broken and I can’t say no to bacon for a buck and I can’t abide bacon in a sandwich without mayo (more rules–call it an equivalent exchange, you can’t subtract without adding…or add without addi—Look, I’m no alchemist, either).
So, I got the #7 and substituted a brioche bun for the regular (all burgers priced over a couple bucks should be on brioche, IMHO. Regular buns are for backyards and drive-ins, and Kaisers have no place around the hamburger.)
My wife opted to build her own. The Build Your Own Burger menu starts with the base price of a $7.99 and you pick your protein, bun, and cheese, upon which you add all the toppings you desire from the free selections and the premium selections that range from $0.75 to $1.50, each. Christa chose a beef patty on brioche (my girl!), cheddar cheese, LTPKM, bacon and grilled onions.
We decided on a fountain drink for me ($2.00 with refill) and a bottle of water for her ($1.25), because, blech. We also got a side of large fries to share because at $2.99 it’s only fifty cents more than the regular and a bargain is a bargain, even when manipulative. For an upcharge, you can add Old Bay, Cheese, or truffle salt. Hey, it’s your fifty to one hundred-fifty cents.
You might be starting to see my ultimate dilemma. We were only two burgers and a side of fries into this meal and were already over $20. The times, they are a-changin’. If this was a sit-down joint we’d be up to $30 including the tip. These are burgers, people. But, then, we could have gone to McD’s; today we placed a higher value on quality and taste. Still, it’s a only ground beef. My dilemma.
In addition, Chicago’s best offers chicken wings in multiples of six from $6.99-$22.99, breaded or unbreaded, in the usual array of sauces. And there is a salad. A $6.99 house salad that can be topped with your choice of meat or veggie patty for $3.49. Hey, you do you. They also have a menu item called a Potato Tornado, which is a spiral cut potato on a stick with a choice of sea salt or seasoning powders (salt and vinegar seasoning, ketchup, garlic parm, and cheddar). This seems like a gimmicky wrench to throw in the process-flow machine, but it’s not my place. Maybe it’s just for fun. You know—for kids.
An option that we overlooked was the combo deal: “Make any meal or salad a combo for an additional $3.50. Combo includes fresh cut fries and a soft drink.” Without asking, the cashier took the liberty of making my order a combo, thus saving us a buck forty-nine. Well done, sir. The cook was also astute enough to split the order of fries evenly on our trays without asking. Bonus points.
What they did not do was point out that the #7 Classic Cheeseburger is priced higher than if you chose the same combination from the Build Your Own menu–$0.50 higher, to be precise. It’s a drop in the bucket and hardly worth mentioning, but I can’t help wondering if this was a mistake, or intentional. And if it was intentional, is it shady pricing? And where is the correction to be made? Adjust the price of bacon up fifty cents, or drop the price of the classic fifty cents. But the change will ruin the uniformity of all Specialty Burgers being $9.99. Hmm.
The guys were kind enough to bring the burgers around to our table for us. My eyes teared as I gazed upon the burgers in all their piled, stacked, drizzled, griddled, glistening glory. What a presentation. What a sap.
Their trays were quarter sheet pans (just like Wayback Burgers) lined with black and white checkered wax paper. The fresh cut, moderately salted french fries piled on the left, the burger piled on the right. The patty was tender enough to droop a bit off one side of the obscured bottom bun. The yellow American cheese glistened in its half-melted glory under two crisp, thick, mahogany limbs of bacon that were dressed in Lichtensteinian streaks of yellow, red, and white. The top toasted bun of brioche was propped to the rear, almost dwarfed in diameter by the height of the sandwich. The LTOP was on the bottom bun, under the patty. Also, spring mix–I hate spring mix on a burger, but iceberg wasn’t an option. I’ll share my opinions on sandwich lettuce at a later time.
Step one, check that all specified toppings are present: check: check. Step two, cut into the patty to verify correct temp: check. Step three, place top bun on burger and press gently enough to compress to a manageable thickness, without squeezing out all the meaty juices: half-check.
This was one damned juicy burger. I barely had to put pressure on the medium grilled patty before it ran like a sieve. Oh, boy; I pulled several napkins from the dispenser and set them within quick reach; the bottom bun was now soaking up the juices. The whole thing had a hefty weight to it, it felt substantial in my hands.
I took a bite of bacon that stuck out like a broken wing. Meaty with a streak of fat, nice smoke, and tooth, just crisp. A swig of coke cleansed the palate and I went in for the first bite. The whole combination was a pleasure: very tender beef, smokey from the bacon, good flavor and mouthfeel from the cheese, definitely moist, the tomato and diced pickle stood out but did not overpower the rest. I hardly noticed the onion and (thankfully) the spring mix, the bacon was too much for it.
I broke off a piece of the patty and chewed on it. It had a mild beef flavor that wasn’t the best I’d ever tasted but was adequate—not surprisingly. Beef is most flavorful in the fat and grass-fed beef has less fat than grain fed. Grain fed cattle might not be the healthiest, for themselves or for us, but you can’t argue with the flavor they develop. The flavor of ground grass-fed beef can be enhanced by adding more fat to the ratio when grinding, and this may have been done as would be verified by the tender juiciness of these burgers, but the flavor just wasn’t very bold. That said, it was good enough for me and this present quest to satisfy a craving.
Christa was struggling. She was not blessed with my hinged jaw and takes bites that are less hippo and more finch. She retrieved a knife from a caddy by the soda fountain and made a clean cut down the middle of hers.
“What do you think?” I asked, halfway through mine.
“I’ll let you know in a bit.”
We both sprinkled more salt on our fries and dispensed the ketchup in little piles that I never used. The fries were tasty without it. I didn’t see an indication of what oil they use, but I also didn’t see any peanut warnings, so I’m guessing vegetable fryer shortening. If I recall, the potatoes were cut using a ⅜” grid—not narrow shoestrings, not thick and doughy. They had a nice contrast of browned crispness and soft potato. One fail: no vinegar, so bring your own bottle of Heinz malt. Fresh cut french fries without vinegar is like air without oxygen–both are consumable, but you’ll die a horrible suffocating death.
Yes, you’ll die without vinegar; read a book.
How did we survive? Maybe we didn’t—in that universe….
I pinched up the remnants of ground beef and bacon from the puddles of melted cheese and ketchup and popped them in my mouth for the last savor of a solid, tasty burger. As I finished the last of my fries, Christa finished the second half of her burger.
She decided it was good, better than Five Guys, but not as good as Wayback. She’s had better, though this is the best (and first) burger she’s had since our arrival to Florida. It blows the unmentionable Grief O’Grady’s out of the water. She was especially fond of the fries and loved that the “grilled onions” were actually grilled and caramelized, not merely sweated as is too often the case. She was disappointed in the pricing issue with the Classic Cheeseburger versus building the equivalent (it was she that discovered the discrepancy), but this was certainly no deal breaker. She, too, would return. With malt vinegar.
The staff (all two of them, plenty for the amount of business they had at this time of day) were friendly and attentive. They didn’t spend time shooting the breeze, even though they had the opportunity. As we rose to return our tray, the cashier jumped to save us the trip and they both wished us a nice day with a thank you as we left.
As a customer was leaving he declared to the cook that he hasn’t gone to Five Guys since he first came here. “This place is better. Even your fries.” I don’t know about that. I’d need to do a side by side to be sure, but even then, it’s not down to taste alone. A Five Guy’s single is only $6. That leaves some money for their awesome fries and we’re still under $10. With vinegar.
Some may be tempted to balk at a $10 burger without sides, and I do at times. But prices are a reflection, not a whim, and you can either accept the trend or stick with the lesser but adequate fare from Steak n’ Shake. I like Sn’S, they serve a purposeful $3 burger with fries, but I’ve never once sat there, picking over the last morsels from the plate and longingly reminiscing over what I had just eaten. I reminisced longingly at Chicago’s Best Burgers, and I’m doing it now.
I don’t know what is Chicago about Chicago’s Best Burgers other than maybe the owners’ origin. The burgers and combinations seem pretty universal. It’s a small point and unimportant [zip it, brain]. What is important is that Chicago’s Best appear to love burgers and love serving them to customers that also love burgers and it shows in the product.
Our tastes are subjective and our senses so delicate that the slightest foreign input could alter our perceptions. I’ll need to figure in other values as well: atmosphere, consistency, distance, and budget. Also, as an entrepreneur myself, I’d rather support a local operator than a chain, whenever possible. So as to not get bogged down in details, it can be simply stated that Chicago’s Best Burgers makes the best burger I’ve eaten in Brandon for under ten dollars. Until I experience a better one, they will do just nicely as my go-to local burger joint.
Thanks for reading!