This A++ burger broke Alison Cook’s point scale
Thursday was National Hamburger Day. I dislike those madeup promotional “holidays,” when journalists typically dance to the music of public relations professionals. Yet there I was, parked in a strip mall on the Interstate 10 West feeder road a couple of exits past Beltway 8, gobbling a burger like a wild animal.
Meat juice adorned my chin. French fries flew every which way. A driver in the next car regarded me with something akin to horror, or maybe it was just alarm.
How, I asked myself, had it come to this?
Let me explain. Food reporting during the pandemic dictates takeout for yours truly, but takeout is not friendly to the whole burger genre. Burgers are best eaten on the spot, hot off the grill, while the meat juices are still seething quietly and the toasted buns, melted cheese and fresh ingredients, if any, are at their best. There’s a short window of excellence, followed by a long curve of diminishing pleasure.
So I had resolved to eat my first few bites of every takeout burger (and every french-fry order) right there in the restaurant’s parking lot, the better to judge its merits fairly.
But my first bite of the Greek Burger from Just GRK, the distinguished little Greek grill, set off something primal in my brain, and I just couldn’t stop at a couple of bites. Without really meaning to, I scarfed down the whole thing. Here’s why:
PRICE: $12.95 for the Greek Burger with hand-cut fries; $1 for the cheese option.
ORDERING: Just GRK has a detailed, efficient online ordering option set up on its website. I opened an account for myself, placed my order — marveling that it actually gave me the option to specify degree of doneness — plugged in a pickup time and paid via credit card. (There’s no option for leaving a tip, my only sorrow.)
My food was ready right on the dot, handed to me through the passenger-side window when I called to say I had arrived.
ARCHITECTURE: Salad stuff, in the form of a tomato, on top; and on the side, in the form of a quick-pickled house cucumber relish. On a shiny, toasted bun goes a thick beef patty, a thin mantle of Greek white cheese, a slice of tomato and a healthy schmear of garlic sauce. That’s it.
QUALITY: I loved everything about this burger, from the expansive, juice-splooshing clarity of the tall, aggressively seared beef patty; to the lively seasoning; to the lush tomato slice; to the thick, assertive garlic sauce. This marvelous substance is the kind of condiment you’d expect to find on a gyro or shawarma sandwich, the kind of stuff that makes aioli seem prissy in comparison.
If the garlic sauce sounds scary to you, you can opt out of it on the burger-ordering form. Or just order a regular burger. But I found the Greek Burger uniquely satisfying, with the primacy of its good beef, its expert cooking, its thin slice of salty Greek cheese and its essential simplicity. It really did speak to some primitive part of my brain, and I was helpless to stop eating once I had begun.
OOZE RATING: Glorious. LETTER GRADE: A ++. This burger broke my brain, and my point scale.
BONUS POINTS: Very good, crisp hand-cut fries complete the burger picture. They seem to be more highly seasoned than they once were, which meant I wound up eating fewer of them, but they are very nicely made. And get this: To keep them from sweating and wilting inside their styrofoam clamshell, a staffer had stabbed the top of the container with a fork to make dozens of tiny holes, so that the expanse looked like a distant galaxy. It worked!
SUPER EXTRA BONUS POINTS: I got a chance to take home a quartet of Just GRK’s scintillating dips (tzatziki, eggplant, skordalia and kefalotiri, a red-peppered feta whip), along with three pita rounds’ worth of fresh pita triangles. Not to mention two lovely spanakopita turnovers, filled with spinach and feta, their envelopes a delicate crunch.
LOCAL COLOR: The stripcenter parking lot in which I ate offers few thrills. But seeing the friendly faces of brother-sister team Chris and Anastasia Nikolas, even half hidden behind their face masks, meant everything to me. The corners of their eyes crinkled up in welcoming smiles, and I am pretty sure mine did, too.