BURGER FRIDAY: FM KITCHEN AND BAR
Oh happy day. I have a new favorite affordable burger in town. It’s at the welcoming, handsome and supercasual FM Kitchen & Bar just north of where Shepherd crosses Washington Avenue. The architect is chef Ryan Hildebrand, of the late, lamented Triniti, and it is an artful package, indeed. Let’s dig in.
PRICE: $5.89 for the house FM Burger with American cheese. Fries are $2.99. ORDERING: Grab a seat inside at the long bar or at a table; or at a picnic table outside on the big patio. A server will take your order.
ARCHITECTURE: Salad stuff on top. This sandwich is carefully built to chef specs: just witness the graphic T-shirt on sale illustrating the way the layers fit together. On a lightly toasted potato bun goes a nice big splodge of the house secret sauce; a 4-ounce ground beef patty; a slice of American cheese; a ripple of romaine leaf; some sliced tomato; and several rings of red onion. Boom. QUALITY: Swaddled in its cheerful red-and-white tissue wrapper, with colorful layers on view, this is a burger with high curb appeal. The freshness of the ingredients and the to-my-mind perfect proportions make it a standout.
At 4 ounces, the patty is not so big as to make the sandwich unmanageable; you can hold it in your hand easily, and bite all the way through, so as to get the full effect, always a fine turn of events. If you’re the kind of eater who requires a huge pile o’ beef, well, just order an extra patty for $3.99 — but you’ll lose the perfection of the standard package.
The flavors and textures really click. The patty itself — a blend of brisket, chuck and sirloin — gets an emphatic seasoning of sea salt and black pepper (cracked in house, if you please), framed by a healthy griddle sear. Its beefy taste is not overwhelmed by the sticky cheese slice, the crunch of the salad ingredients or, most importantly, the so-called “Shhh sauce,” an ingenious blend of mayo, ketchup and mustard with a swift, tart lift and a freckling of minced pickle. It puts most housemade secret sauces to shame.
The soft, yellow potato bun puts just the right gentle brackets around the rest of the ingredients. A final note: I generally shy away from well-done patties. But the beef is consistently medium-well here, and I love the effect. That’s a rarity and a testament to the finely tuned execution.
Want a final, zippy boost? Apply a bit of the bottled piqué sauce, an inspiration Hildebrand gleaned from a trip to Puerto Rico, where every little restaurant and market stand has its own special blend of vinegar and pureed chiles, with maybe some onion and some carrots to add an orange tint. GRADE: Solid A.
OOZE RATING: Fair. Patty is plenty moist without drippage.
BONUS POINTS: Good, crisp fries with a dusting of sea salt; bonkers “loaded” milkshakes featuring a clown car of surprisingly apt embellishments. There’s also a well-run bar offering simple cocktails and craft beer, including local brews on tap. Service is unfailingly nice and smart, another big plus. LOCAL COLOR: The airy, industrial space by Jim Herd, with vintage garage-style interiors by Erin Hicks, is a calming grid with soaring windowwalls that fling open to catch the breezes. A big outdoor patio — half graveled, half Astroturfed — lures a crowd of Heights-y young professionals, families and a dog or two. (They’re welcome here, and city-sanctioned.) On one of my visits, I got to watch a masked graffiti artist working on one of the exterior walls while a dad gave his two children their first pingpong lesson.
Welcome to fall in Houston.