A Review: Sammy's

It has been awhile since I graced the "cyber-space" with a review. 

There are only a few places in Provo we want to eat but have not. One that was on our list was "Sammy's Burgers and Fries." Sammy's is just off of Center Street in downtown Provo. We live close enough to walk.

From the outside, Sammy's looks like it might not actually have any seating inside. Like it could be a walk-up-only place with a few tables outside for warmer months. But, deceptively, it has a large bar inside (I mean a bar-table, they didn't appear to serve alcohol). The place is a complete hole-in-the-wall. It is the kind of place you would expect to find in a downtown and was completly charming. There speciality is "real pie" shakes. More on that later.

I ordered a Cowabunga burger. Pastrami with mushrooms on a burger. To cut to the chase - it was really good. For a place that serves you on styrafoam, they really knocked the burger out of the park. I knew I was in for something with the Chef came out and had a little chat with us. Then I saw the absolute care he used to apply the condiments. I'm not kidding. The ketchup, ranch, and mustard were applied in a cross-hatch pattern in perfectly uniform zig-zags. 

The fresh ingredients, perfect pastrami, and fabulously toasted bun were more than enough to cover up what I thought to be a mediocre beef patty. The burger as a whole was slow-down-and-close-the-eyes-while-you-chew good. And the fries? Better than Brownstone. Battered, light, crisp, delicious. Their version of "fry sauce" was a little lacking, but these fries were fine naked.

Prices were a little steep. About $6 for the burger, another $2.50 for fries, $1.50 for the drink, and a whopping $4 for our Real Pie Shake. The Shake was really good, for the record. 

I don't know if I can decide between Sammy's and Snakebite. Snakebit does give you silverware, so if you are impressing a date. . . . In the end, you don't have to decide, though. One is in Provo and the other Idaho Falls. 

Brad Reviews Everything

At the turn of the year, I decided to expand on my past "Burger Blogs" and start a series called "Brad Reviews Everything." It could also be called "Unsolicited Opinions."  It will continue to be food-heavy, to be sure. And by "food," I mostly mean hamburgers.

Burger King's Angry Whopper:

I am not a BK fan.  I usually eat at BK only if there is an absurd line at the place I actually wanted to go.  But, on a hunch, I figured that their Angry Whopper would really be a Grumpy Whopper, or a Passive Aggressive Whopper.  Most main-stream places are smart enough to not go very far on the spicy scale with food.  I was right, the Angry Whopper is only a medium-spicy, which is just fine by me.  The jalapenos on it provided some punch, but there were only 4 or so, making it a bearable and tasty heat rather than a mouth-scorcher.  So, for the first time ever, I recommend a BK Burger to anyone who likes a little kick in their food.*

Xbox 360: 

In a fit of juvenile indulgence, I bought a refurbished Xbox 360 for Christmas.  I admit this with a small degree of shame, no doubt.  I paid 150$ for a model with a 60GB harddrive and an HDMI port, which would currently retail for $300.  The catch might be that mine only has a 90 day warranty, and the Xbox 360 is plagued by problems.  But, hey, I like to live on the edge.  

I don't hesitate to say that I think the 360 is the clear winner of the high-stakes video game console wars.  Wii is the other winner.  But the 360 offers a large library of fun games, and can serve as a powerful media hub.  It syncs with my laptop through our network and allows us to stream media from our laptop to our TV.  And, because our laptop has Media Center and a TV tuner, we can use it as a DVR and pause, record, and re-watch live TV.  Oh, I forgot to mention the ability to "rent" movies through the 360.  For a fair-ish price (more than Redbox), you can download and watch a substantial number of new and old movies, many available in High Definition. 

The downside to the 360 is the additional expenses.  For instance, it does not come with any wireless networking capabilities.  And the proprietary Wi-Fi dongle for it is $100.  I've worked around that by loading up a router with some open-source firmware (DD-WRT) and using it to grab our wireless network signal and pass it on to the 360's integrated ethernet port. Cost $30 to buy the router, firmware was free, then probably an hour of tinkering to get it working.  You also have to pay to use Xbox Live, their online gaming service.  I paid 38$ for 13 months, or about $3 a month.  You can spend as much as you like on games, but I've elected to buy used games that are usually a year or two old and cost $5 - $30, depending on popularity.  You get the idea, though. 

So why not the PS3? Sticker shock, for one.  And an inability to identify instantly which games on the PS3 I would want to play.  I am sure they are there, I just didn't/don't know about them.  Blu-ray might be a value-adding feature for many, but I don't have an HD TV, so it was not appealing. 

Sundance Ski Resort

I've been twice this season. It is about 20 minutes from Provo to the slopes.  Sundance is interesting because of the lift configuration.  One lift takes you to the top of the mountain. And then down the other side. Then you can ride one of two other lifts up a mountain kind of behind the one the first lift went over. The result is that most of the runs or a little on the short-side.  Terrain is pretty limited, too.  Your options are essentially wide groomed runs or steeper moguled trails.  They do have a rails/jumps park, but we didn't check it out. 

So here is the recomendation. If you aren't in great shape, don't ski more than once or twice a year, or simply don't want to ski one of Utah's Big Mountain resorts, then Sundance is the place for you.  During the week, the place is pretty much empty.  The scenery is second to none, and the snow has been just great both times I've gone. 

*comming soon: 5 Guys Burgers And Fries = Best Fast Burger Ever

Brownstone Burger

The brownstone is a restaurant and microbrewery that sits right on the "falls" in Idaho Falls. This was the first time I had ever been. I forget exactly how much my meal cost, but it was between 7 and 10 dollars, I think.

Let me start with something positive. Best. Fries. Ever. I don't know if they were beer battered, loaded with some special seasoning, or contained an illegal substance, but these were incredible. I started with a fry and almost forgot about the burger. Hot, thick, light, crisp. If people knew that potatoes could be this good, they would never boil or mash them. Even better than the much-praised Snake Bite fries. But, this is a burger blog.

You will have to forgive me, but the name of my burger escapes me. It had grilled onions, grilled peppers, a BBQ sauce, and cheddar. It was really the grilled onions that caught my attention and convinced me to order it. I like grilled onions. A lot. In fact, the menu reffered to them as "caramelized onions," which really had me believin' this was going to be special. But instead of "WOW!" or "WHOA!" this managed oh muffled "Meh."

It had some things going for it. It was a good and greasy bar-and-grill burger with lots of melted cheese. I doubt they made the bun, but it was satisfactory. Where things started to lose points were with the beef patty. Frozen pre-press, I am sure. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't any better than something I would find at Carl's Jr. The onions and peppers didn't really inspire, either. Peppers lose alot of their flavor when your fry them, I think. The onions just got lost in it all.

Maybe the biggest disappointment was the BBQ sauce. I think the best way to describe it would be "Ketchupy". Just a bit on the bland side for a BBQ. . . more sweet than tangy and not at all spicy.

So, in the end, I recommend Brownstone as a restaurant, but not the burgers so much. Maybe get a basic cheese burger, as the cheese was really good and you need an excuse to eat all those fries! Hmm. . . now that I think about it, we had to wait a really long time for our food, and this was lunch. Still, a good place, just don't be in a hurry.

Clap. . . Clap. . . Clap (rises to feet).

Pictured above is the current bench-mark for Idaho Falls' burgers. Indeed, this may be the bench-mark for any burger I have had in the last year. It's from the Snakebite in downtown Idaho Falls and is called the Cowboy Burger.

The technical specs are simple enough; onionring, cheese, BBQ sauce, some other funky sauce and a piece of lettuce. Objectively, it doesn't look like anything special, but the beauty was in the execution. It was clear that this was not prepared by a "cook," but rather a Chef. And for about 8 bucks with fries, I thought it was even a good deal.

Let me elaborate. The obviously hand-formed beef patty was hot, juicy, and pink enough that I would have sent it back at a fast food place. Perfect. A single, large onion ring was used and a house specific BBQ sauce that was bold and spicey was applied judiciously. I think I am realizing that it is alot easier to describe a bad burger than a good one . . . there isn't much to say about this other than it was good. I am overcoming some sort of virus and have sores on the inside of my mouth -- even though they burned with each peppery bite, I gleefully forged on. The picture shows the bun, but probably doesn't do it justice. All of the ingredients were fresh and, I assume, mostly made on-site.

I was with my older brother, Rich, who ordered a different burger that had blue cheese. His beef was a little more done than mine, but I feel like I can confidently suggest to anyone in Idaho Falls that any of the Snakebite burgers will deliver a satisfying meal. Filling, tasty, not so greasy that it leaves you aching later. Unless you are counting calories, the ample helping of crisscut fries is also excellent. Again, these were really a thing of beauty. They were so light and crispy it was almost like eating a near perfect potato chip.

The only thing I would warn is that everything I tried had a bit of a peppery kick to it, even the fry sauce. I really enjoy it, but if you are spice-averse, you might be hurting toward the end of your meal. I look forward to trying their other burgers in the future.

(Side note: Perry, who is older than me but was on the high school debate team with me was working at the Snakebite. It would have been fun to chat, but I don't think he recognized/remembered me and I didn't want to bother him while he worked.)

Burger Blog

I was going to start a whole blog dedicated to my review of burgers. But then Ali told me I could review one burger a week here, and that is about all I planned on doing. I'll be sure to label all of my burger blogs with the label "burger blog," so you can find them when trying to decide.

This weeks burger: Chili's Mushroom Swiss.

Let me start by saying that I expect a hamburger from a real restaurant to be significantly better than something I could get at a fast food place. At about 8 bucks for the Mushroom Swiss with fries, this was really a pretty reasonable deal. I would spend that much for a combo meal at Carl's Jr. or Jack in the Box, so maybe I shouldn't have expected this to be spectacular. In a word, the Mushroom Swiss disappointed.

I like mushroom burgers. A good mushroom burger will really taste life a fine steak. This was just a hot mess. The shrooms came off dry and quite flavorless. The swiss was also a disappointment. It never got hot enough to melt adequately, leaving a piece of swiss that was drained of its good oils, kind of yellow-y, and not firmly affixed to the beef patty.

I was pretty excited when they asked me how I wanted my burger done. Sure, I don't want to eat raw ground beef, but over-cooked burgers are a big problem. I ordered medium-well, expecting to get a moist patty with light-gray innards. What I got was a crispy outside (which is fine) with a dry, dark inside. The beef was kind of crumbling as I ate it. It wasn't horrible, but why ask me how I want my burger done if you are just going to over-cook it anyway?

I think one of the more over-looked components of a burger is the bun. A good bun can go a long ways to either covering up other problems or just making a good burger better. This bun had potential, but the presentation was all wrong. It was squished, soggy, and I think they might have put the top bun on the bottom! Other than that, it was pretty good bread.

The other toppings were sufficient, I guess. I was a little disappointed that there was only one tomato slice, and the tomato was clearly over-ripe. I'm not a big tomato fan anyway, so I pulled it out after eating about half of it.

If the burger comes with a side, I'll discuss it, too. This came with fries. They were bad enough that I only ate half of one then offered the rest to my daughter Morgan. Morgan uses fries as a utensil to get "dip it" (ketchup, mayonaise, ranch, fry sauce etc.) to her mouth, and they worked well for that. But they were medium-cut fries that were under done and un-seasoned. Those kind of fries that kind of hover between 'steak fry' and 'crispy fry' but wind up being the worst of both worlds.

Maybe I just got a lower-quality Chili's Mushroom Swiss. I might have to try another one, maybe next year, to see if they can do it better. But I would rate Carl's Jr. Six Dollar Portobello Mushroom Swish burger AND Wingers Mushroom burger well ahead of the Chili's variety. . . and I think it goes without saying that neither Carl's Jr. or Winger's aren't exactly 5 star restaurants.

Alison thinks I should have a standard rating system. I might develop one, but for now I will just explain the relative qualities/ranking of a burger. I'm hesitant to go with a standard rating because there is so much variety in the burger world. How do you compare something like a Teriyaki Pineapple burger to a Jalepeno Cheddar melt? Also, I'll try to take a picture of the burger I actually eat. The above is just from the Chili's website . . . it looks better than my burger.