BURGER FRIDAY
Doing back flips for Flip ‘n Patties.
Sitting in a bus lane on Milam, my emergency lights blinking, I should have known I was doing it wrong.
“This is a weird place for curbside pickup,” I thought as I watched approaching cars move around me and the looming bulk of a bus approaching in my rearview mirror. Only when I spotted the masked staffer from Flip ’n Patties newer downtown location poised on the opposite street corner, sack in hand, did I realize I was waiting on the wrong side of the street.
Yeah, Flip ’n Patties bright atrium space is in Bank of America’s Understory, not Pennzoil Place. And there’s plenty of nonthreatening curbside parking over on the east side of Milam.
I had been meaning to check out the famously madcap burgers at the young downtown location of this Filipino spot, but then the pandemic intervened. Maybe I couldn’t see it, but I could still taste it.
Flip ’n was launched by two cousins, Don and Michael Jante, as a food truck in 2012, complete with an in-house karaoke machine. The tongue-in-cheek Flip ’n name flipped an old ethnic slur on its head and reclaimed it. And the cousins’ “dare ya” Filipino streetfood stylings won a constituency among the club and nightlife crowd as they moved from venue to venue.
They launched a brick-andmortar restaurant out west, on Eldridge, in late 2018. The downtown store opened half a year later. Here’s how my socially distanced visit went:
PRICE: $12.99 for the Flip ’n Patties signature burger; $3.29 for the discounted side of fries ordered in tandem with it; $1 for two extra sauces on the side, for a total of $17.28 before tax and tip.
ORDERING: Flip ’n Patties has an excellent online ordering system for curbside or in-store pickup. It’s a customizer’s dream, with an almost comical onslaught of add, subtract and side options — not just for the complex burger creations but for everything else, too. You can pay online, and yes, there is a tip prompt.
You can schedule your order for pickup later rather than the standard 15-20 minutes, too. Just wait for the prompt further down in your ordering process, fill in your car description and jot down the phone number you’ll call upon arrival. My food was ready on time and came out promptly.
ARCHITECTURE: Salad stuff on the bottom. This thing is a veritable tower. On a pale steamed bun given a buttery griddle sear goes the restaurant’s Tang Sauce, lettuce shreds, a tomato slice, the house Spicy Sauce and a half-inch Texas Akaushi beef patty. That’s followed by a vulcanized layer of bacon and cheddar, half-melded together; and the grand finale: a big old portabello mushroom cap that has been stuffed with cheddar and provolone cheeses and fried in panko crumbs. No, I am not making that up.
QUALITY: There’s so much going on in the Flip ’n Patties Burger, both in terms of texture and flavor, that it’s a minor miracle how well it all blooms into something even bigger.
The gently sweet steamed bun, a variation on Filipino siopao, plays a Houston-familiar sweetsourdough role against salt, the heat of the house sauce and the umami forces of meat and mushroom.
The Wagyu patty contributes forceful beef flavor, important in this riotous context — and although my specified “medium rare” turned out to be mediumwithout-a-tinge-of-pink, the patty stayed plenty juicy.
And the textures just kept happening, from the slide of the secret-sauced salad ingredients to the melty mat of chewy bacon and cheddar. The capper? That wonderfully preposterous fried portabello cap stuffed with oozy cheeses, its dark-brown panko crust popping off in a sharp, sandy crunch. Can you eat this tall stack with two hands? Not likely, but in a pinch you can extract the portabello and consume it as an impromptu side, dipped into the banana-ketchup aioli you were smart enough to add to your order. Boom.
OOZE RATING: Not bad. The Akaushi Wagyu patty stayed juicy enough even at medium to medium-well, and a few stray meat juices leaked into the white paper wrapper, always a good sign.
LETTER GRADE: A. I can see why this baroque burger put Flip ’n Patties on the map.
VALUE: Decent, considering that at $13, this towering, quality burger could practically feed two people.
BONUS POINTS: Don’t even get me started about the fabulous french fries. OK, do. They are deeply bronzed with a sturdy crunch to them and a soft interior that screams “unfrozen potato.” What’s more, they travel well — which is rare for fries. Mine were still warm and beautifully textured after a 15 minute ride.
For maximum effect, be sure to grab a couple of 50-cent side sauces for dipping purposes, like the rosy, tropical bananaketchup aioli or the housemade mayo, a faintly sweet eggy fluff not unlike Kewpie.
MINUS POINTS: My sole sorrow was that when I reached “Life-changing Flan” on the menu, it was marked “sold out.” It’s cruel to withdraw the promise of life-changing flan.
STUFF FOR LATER: Talk about a bonanza! I scored some lovely mini lumpia, the Filipino egg roll variant filled with spicy pork, to dip into a sweet red chile dip that was fragrant with fish sauce. Snack city, just like the pair of grilled pork skewers in Filipino barbecue sauce.
I got a protein-packed Longsilog Plate of two house-made longaniza sausage patties nested on garlic-toasted rice, with an egg over easy on top, a couple more of those baby lumpia and some more red chile sauce on the side. Vervy and fun to eat.
LOCAL COLOR: When I called inside to announce my arrival at curbside, I would swear that a staffer answered with a chipper, “Today is the best day of our lives.” I was so taken aback — with amusement and delight — that I wondered if I had gotten the wording wrong. I mean, who says that?
“Our lives?” “Your life?” All the way home, I wondered about exactly what the young man had said. The cockeyed pandemic optimism of it put a lopsided grin on my face.
Then, in my kitchen, I got a close look at the brown paper takeout bag the staff had decorated and personalized, with my name on it and everything. That humble sack emanated an unaffected sweetness that kinda made my day.
Later, I discovered that the Flip ’n Patties motto really is “Today is the best day of our lives.” I could debate that, but I’d rather roll with it.