‘Impossible Burger’ just not ready for prime time
Perhaps you have heard of the new plant-based Impossible Burger, which has been bruited about in chef circles as a credible replacement for ground beef. “It bleeds!” is an oft-heard refrain.
Famed New York restaurateur David Chang is on board, and so is Chris Shepherd, who started serving the Impossible Burger recently at both his flagship, Underbelly, and his next-door beer hall, The Hay Merchant, in Montrose.
A gaggle of food writers ate the Impossible Burger for free at an Underbelly promotional launch event. I paid $18 for it at Hay Merchant a week later. I was intensely curious about the beef analogue, because I understand the stresses that cattle production puts on our beleaguered planet, and I wondered if science could come up with a satisfying substitute.
One that, say, might be greeted with enthusiasm on some future voyage to Mars, or the moons of Jupiter. Here is my report.
Price: $18 for the Impossible Burger and fries. (By way of comparison, Shepherd’s signature Cease & Desist double cheeseburger, the template on which his
Impossible Burger is modeled, goes for $12.)
Ordering: Find a seat at the tap-wall bar, in the dining room or on the outdoor dining deck. A server will take your order.
Architecture: Served in two halves; salad stuff goes on top. On a poufy, fat Kraftsman challah bun, toasted on both sides, goes a thin Impossible Burger patty followed by a square of yellow cheese. Next comes a second patty and another square of cheese. House-made dill pickle rounds, a thin slice of tomato and a thick sheaf of iceberg leaves crowned the pile, which was tall enough to prevent biting through at a single go. Condiments were do-it-yourself from a wooden six-pack of mustards, mayo, Sriracha, Valentina and ketchup.
Quality: Oh, dear. For all this sandwich’s comeliness, the Impossible Burger patties struck me as repellent.
They looked promising enough, having been engineered out of wheat, coconut and potatoes to present a nice rosy hue that seared up bronze on a flattop. Yet their texture was so soft and squishy that there was none of the tension between juicy interior and snappy crust so vital to the burger experience.
Instead, the patties mooshed right out of the sandwich margins, falling apart into a dispirited heap. They didn’t “bleed”; they squashed. Their interior temperature was tepid at best — that’s why the cheese squares stayed resolutely unmelted — and the whole effect was not unlike consuming raw ground beef, if raw ground beef had a vague umami flavor that didn’t quite click.
I left the bulk of my Impossible Burger uneaten. Even after I applied some mustard and mayo in desperation, I couldn’t keep going. Perhaps if the patties — which are sliced from a cylindrical roll — had spent more time on the griddle, I might have bought in. But this is a product that seems to have narrow tolerances in terms of cooking time and technique. That’s a limiting factor as things stand now. Ooze rating: Zilch.
Grade: F
Bonus points: Good Kennebec fries and a pint of the lovely new Mini Boss IPA from Eureka Heights saved the day.
Local color: There’s always such a lively cross-section of Houstonians at Hay Merchant that even sitting outside in the June heat feels like fun. Next time, I’ll just maximize that fun by ordering the dependable Cease and Desist burger.
The future ain’t here yet.
Note: Hours after this review was published online, the Hay Merchant announced that it had decided to switch from two 3-ounce Impossible Burger patties to a single 6-ounce patty. “With the 3-ounce thin patties, there is about a 20 second window between undercooking and overcooking,” chef-owner Shepherd explained. “It’s not meat, and it doesn’t cook like meat. We’re not afraid to try new things, and sometimes it takes some trial and error to get it right.”