BurgerMeister

Burger reviewed: The Meisterburger

Venue: BurgerMeister, San Francisco, CA

Date: 2 August 2013

One of the first stops on this American burger tour of joy is the city of San Francisco, famous for its hills, food and home of the 49ers and San Francisco Giants.

The venue of choice for our first burger review in San Francisco is BurgerMeister in North Beach.

 As a fan of both food and sports, it certainly feels like at the moment, being organic in this way would put BurgerMeister in rare company. Whilst the Windy Pills saga has raged on in Melbourne, doping scandals in US sports are part and parcel of every sport it seems. So it is fantastic to see a restaurant who wants to buck this trend and give people real food.

Set out in a classic American style diner, serving up as they put it, "real American classic comfort food". BurgerMeister has an astonishing 18 burgers on the menu, and, if that’s not enough, you even have the additional option to make your own. This means the combinations are virtually endless and definitely not for the indecisive.

While Australia has undergone a burger revolution of sorts in recent years, the Burger Friday fellows are continuing our mission to sample burgers far and wide. This means going beyond the land girt by sea, to visit the home of the burger - The United States of America.

Currently spanning six stores, this Bay Area burger chain specialises in burgers made with meat sourced from Niman Ranch; meaning that they are guaranteed to be all natural and free of hormones, steroids or antibiotics.

The burger reviewed by the Fellows was the signature MeisterBurger, awarded as the best Burger in San Francisco an astonishing 6 times in a row. An admirable dynasty, but still quite a way from arguably Australia’s greatest ever female athlete, Heather McKay, who went unbeaten in competitive squash matches from 1962 to 1981 and only lost two matches for her career. Only 15 more burger titles to go…

The MeisterBurger is a 1/5lb Niman Ranch beef pattie cooked to choice, topped with crispy Niman Ranch Applewood smoked bacon, sautéed mushrooms, sautéed onions, fresh avocado and cheese on a traditional sesame hamburger bun. Served with crispy cooked fries and your choice of ketchup, mustard or Dijon mustard condiments at your table, this burger is an absolute winner.

While perhaps the sloppiest burger I have ever tried to eat, meaning structural integrity was an issue for even the top burger management experts, this critic was over shadowed by the exceptional flavours.

The toppings on this burger were first class. The crispy bacon was cooked perfectly and provided beautiful crunch to offset the softness of the burger bun and the sautéed mushrooms and onions. I was a little hestitant about the addition of fresh avocado (which was literally a whole avocado) on the burger, but was pleasantly surprised with how well it worked with the juiciness of the mushrooms and onions and the mustard sauce.

The star of the show was the beef pattie, which was cooked perfectly to a medium and was undoubtedly one of the best tasting patties I have experienced on my burger Friday journeys. Large in size, organic, perfectly seasoned, it just ticked all the right boxes and was simply excellent.

Given the sheer number of ingredients going on in this burger full marks must be given for the synergies that they have managed to create. A fantastic combination of sweet, savoury, crispy, soft, and tangy make this burger an absolute ripper.

In honour of the local San Francisco NFL team the 49ers, I am going to dub this burger after its quarterback Colin Kaepernick. After being drafted in 2011, Kaepernick lead the 49ers in 2012, breaking various individual post season records, all the way to the Super Bowl, only to be defeated narrowly by the Baltimore Ravens. Just strolling the streets of San Francisco and seeing the sheer number of people wearing clothing with his name can tell you he is the people's champ. And I am going to bet by the time his career is over, he will have an awards listing similar to that of BurgerMeister.

If in San Francisco I highly recommend you get around this burger now.

Burger Friday score: 42.5/50