Home Burger Bar
Home Burger Bar was the place that sparked the idea of writing this blog. Since it is well known in the Madrid gourmet circles - and puh-lease all you pretentious people who want to start arguing about using the words hamburger and gourmet in the same sentence, suck it up - we chose it as our next review place. Home Burger Bar also has more than one restaurant, namely three which still qualifies it as a non chain. This time we invaded its branch in the heart of Chueca.
This time we made a reservation to avoid an unnecessary wait, but I had to be persistent and call a few times until someone finally answered. In the end, the effort was in vain, the place was empty save for two occupied tables. I felt a bit foolish even mentioning we had a reservation in a half empty restaurant, but then again they had my phone number and one never knows, maybe they would have called me if we wouldn’t appear and that would have been an embarrassing moment.
The interior is something of a mix between a diner and a train, not completely sure what the architect was aiming for, but I like it. The table setting is correct, with ketchup, mustard and salt and pepper already on the table. And YES, the drinks come in bottles, although the glass sizes are a bit silly. I got tired of drinking coke all the time, so I ordered sparkling water and I got something that just about qualifies as a proper glass instead of a shot glass. It didn’t help that they filled it with three cubes of ice and a lemon; I had to refill the glass after every sip and the lemon kept poking me in the eye.
The menu is divided between burgers, gourmet burgers, club sandwiches and gourmet club sandwiches. The difference between the gourmet and non-gourmet is the price and then the fancy shit you get for paying more. Since I am all about fancy shit I went for La Cabrita, with goat cheese, blueberry sauce and a mix of different lettuce. And yes, I was a bit worried I wouldn’t make it to the toilet fast enough after combining goat cheese with blueberry sauce. Hermzz, on the other hand, is all against fancy shit on his food so he ordered La Especial Home with Philadelphia cheese, walnuts and grilled onion. Compulsory side of fries (home made, damn skippy!) and coleslaw. During our feast we came across the important topic of coleslaw and even though I searched through our bible (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleslaw) I didn’t find any real reason why coleslaw is usually served with barbecue or hamburgers so I leave it as an exercise for the reader.
The burgers taste great no arguing there, but the buns were a bit dry. Hermzz dealt with his burger in a record time of 7 minutes but claims he enjoyed every juicy bite. Speaking of juicy; my burger was well done, hence I cannot really judge, but Hermzz admitted there was less juiciness than expected in a medium rare burger. Work on it people.
In the end we felt we had some space left for desert and the choice fell on brownie and cheese cake. Usually a typical brownie MUST come with vanilla ice cream on it. The whole concept of eating a hot brownie is having the cold ice cream on top of it so you can fully experience the explosion of sweet taste. This one only had whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Disappointing. The cheese cake was ok, but let’s face it; I don’t know a single European restaurant that can do a proper cheese cake. It’s like asking for a tortilla Española in Norway, you’ll just get an omelette with some potatoes chucked in for good measure.
Summary:
- Bonus points for glass bottles, minus bonus points for toy glasses.
- Fast service and if you’re charming like the two of us, they give you an ocasional wink too.
- Good meat quality, although I’ve had better. The taste of burgers is fantastic.
- Very classy menu card and bonus points for having ecofriendly meat.
- Big plus point for not being afraid to experiment with tastes and not sticking to the norm.
Thanks to the very intimate lighting inside the place all the pictures came out looking like ass.
