BALBOA CAFE
Price: $11.50
Beef:
All-natural ground chuck from Vande Rose Farms
Bun:
Bay Bread French baguette
Fixings:
House made pickles, lettuce, marinated onions, your choice of cheddar, Swiss or Roquefort.
Cooked:
Grilled
Comes with:
Shoestring fries
The Balboa Burger (a different burger is served at the bar)—which the classic SF restaurant often serves up to 100 a day—brings up an aspect of the burger that’s normally not a point of discussion: patty shape. Unless you’re dealing with Wendy’s, hamburger patties are generally round. Although ground beef doesn’t naturally form into a disc, there’s something just very natural about a round shape. Something organic.
In this regard, Balboa’s burger patty is not very organic—it’s a rectangle. There’s a method to the madness though: It’s shaped this way to fit into the baguette “bun” it’s served within. Which I suppose is better than Zuni’s square bun with a round patty, because the meat-to-bread ratio is all there. But for a burger traditionalist, a rectangle is disconcerting.
As far as it’s taste? The Balboa burger is solid—especially for the price, which includes shoestring fries that I think are too crisp, but some people go nutty over. The patty was a little tough (probably from cooks spending hours handling it, shaping it into perfect rectangle, but what do I know) and the burger comes with a lot of tangy house-made pickles. The chewy baguette doesn't work for me; you lose that luscious factor that some burgers provide. But there’s something to be said for an unpretentious, white-tablecloth burger that you can eat by candlelight. Which at Balboa you can.
