The burger world tour continued this past weekend. It consisted of two stops; one excellent and one disappointing.
I had to pick up my visiting friend at his parent’s house and this ended up changing the order that the burgers would be sampled. We followed my wife’s GPS into Falls Church and found parking, possibly illegally, and proceeded into Elevation Burger. The large menu is apparent as soon as one enters Elevation Burger. There are many options which is really only one option, which is the way it should be. You are given the option of getting a burger with anywhere from one to ten patties, and various other toppings.
The great thing about Elevation Burger is it is basically an In and Out Burger without the trip to the west coast. Their beef is free range and grass feed which gives it a strong unique flavor. The burgers are rich with beefy goodness and the buns are made to fit perfectly over the burger patties making the burgers nicely sized and wonderfully tasty. A truly good burger should be able to be enjoyed as meat and bun alone. This burger definitely can be.
At the bottom of one of the many signs in Elevation Burger they brag that their buns do not compete with the burger. I didn’t know exactly what this meant until I went to Big Buns in Arlington, Va. The main problem with them was that they lived too much up to their name. The buns were definitely big, but a bun that is twice as big as the burger is just not a good thing, especially when they taste like dry Styrofoam. The burger itself had a good flavor to it but it was nothing compared to Elevation Burger which I had eaten only minutes earlier, and it wasn’t because of the multiple burgers that this one became a chore to finish.
Big Buns also suffered by having too much of a menu. They gave people the options of getting their burgers in a bowl as well as on a bun. This might be a key to making them good if one were to bring their own bun. But they also give the option of getting fish, chicken, or veggie burger. If someone wants fish, chicken, or veggies they shouldn’t be in a burger joint.
A burger joint should be a bastion of manliness, and just like real men don’t wear small, real men also don’t eat fish, chicken, or veggies in a burger joint (topping such as lettuce and onions are meat enhancers when in the presence of meat).
If Big Buns were to shrink the size of their buns and concentrate their menu then they might be descent. Right now they don’t even rate and therefore their burgers don’t even deserve a numerical score. One the other hand Elevation Burgers blew me away and earned themselves a 9.8, and I will be visiting them again in the future.
'Til Death Do Us Part 