The Great Austin Burger Hunt - Hatcreek Burger Co.

Hatcreek Burger Co.

5400 Burnet Rd.

Austin, TX  78756

I've been doing the Great Austin Burger Hunt for a while now, and to be honest, I have been pretty disappointed.  You may have seen my ranking of the first ten, but so far I have really found a burger that wowed me.  I've had some good burgers and some a little better than that, but nothing that I would call great.  I don't know if I think this one is great, but it did give me a wow.

I ordered the Big Hat Burger with two patties, and cheese.  I did my usual and had them leave off the onions, pickles and tomatoes, and then I went and sat down.  Like Whataburger, they will bring you your burger when it is ready, only instead of giving you a number, they ask for your name.

My burger came quickly with a big tied bag of fries.  I took one bite and....WOW! and definitely a good wow.  Just about the first thing I noticed was the cheese.  Now, that is a surprise most of the time.  Usually, it is hard to tell a cheeseburger from a hamburger.  There was nothing really special about the cheese, it seemed to be cheapo American Cheese, just like you get most other places.  I cannot really say exactly why the cheese was so noticeable.  I don't think there was more than you get elsewhere, and it wasn't special cheese, but it really stood out.  I think they did a better job of getting it melted, but I just cannot say for sure.

The meat certainly did its part.  It was spiced differently, but it was good.  This was something else that Hatcreek did better than other burger joints, and yet I cannot say exactly what it was.  The meat really tasted good, and the burger was juicy without being too messy.

They use Iceberg lettuce, but in whole leaves.  One critique is that they use all of the leaf down to the big thick woody part of the base of the leaf, which is a less than wonderful experience.  Which leaves only the bun, and here is where they let me down.  When are American sandwich shops, and especially burger joints going to learn that the bread needs to more than something to separate your fingers from the meat.  Nothing wrong with the bun, just nothing really right about it either, so while they get a very high score, it isn't a perfect ten because of lackluster buns.

So, on to the fries, which were plentiful.  They were well cooked, in fact a little too well cooked in my opinion.  They looked pretty awful, and I was expecting them to be rather greasy and lifeless.  Well, I was wrong, they were crunchy and quite tasty.  They were skin-on fries, which I don't mind, except that it looked like about 2/3rds of my fries came from the outside of the potato, and most had one long side that was skin.  I don't mind potato skins, but this was a bit much.  I expect my skin-on fries to have a ratio of one-side skin-on fries and end skin-on fries to be about equal to a large potato.  This looked more like they gave the center of the potato to someone else and gave me all the ones around the outside.  They also had good legs.

So, I would have to put Hatcreek Burger Co. right at the top of my burger list so far, but there is still room to improve.