Sonic Burger – San Marcos, CA

The UBR staff has long been awaiting the grand opening of Sonic Burger in San Marcos.  Of course the timing was perfect because it was Greg’s turn to buy, because he was a big stupid loser, and also it gave the cheap whiner the opportunity to use a coupon he has been holding on to for over two years. For this review, we invited Amanda (a.k.a. Poops) to be our official guest reviewer. Sadly, Poops may have flushed her chances for any future reviews.  The highly coveted UBR Associate level potential may have swirled right down the toilet.  This is all because she failed to do her homework of studying past reviews and she also lacked the ability to provide us a mobile burger review app for free.

Sonic’s format is unique in the fact that you have three serving choices.  You can go through the drive through, pull up to the mini squawk box and eat in your car, or eat outside and order from one of several land-based giant squawk boxes.  The multitude of choices caused a serious dilemma with Mike who had to circle the parking lot to figure it all out. It was like being in a burger round-a-bout. The center of the grounds consists of a building that resembles a bank with tinted windows and a door with an ‘employee’s only ‘ sign that servers on skates would come bursting through.  This is a bit disturbing as you don’t get the opportunity to see your food being cooked. For all we know the roller skate servers are bringing us repurposed feral cat burgers.

The excitement for our burgers was quickly stalled when we decided to try and place our order through, what can most easily be described as walk up ATMs with a Siri that has the mental capacity of a six year old. And when you pair a burger-image-covered talking ATM with Meatsack Mike, the confusion was near instantaneous.  All we wanted was a few lousy burgers.  After about ten minutes of agony and numerous confirmations of our order, we were pretty confident we had success.

After finding a picnic table on the front patio, our roller skate server quickly arrived with our food, greeted us with a smile, and gave great service.  But even after all the inane dialog with the ‘ATM’, the order was wrong. This made us wonder, why couldn’t we have just placed our order with our roller girl?  As we ate, there were roller skaters zipping all over the place demonstrating their mad rolling skills. Of course this instantly gave Troy the idea of returning next time with a sack of pebbles to scatter around to provide entertaining carnage as we dined.

But enough of the fun and games…we know you are dying to find out what we thought of the food! Well, our loyal burger fans, the burger rated a strong 3 out of 5.  Not that that’s a bad thing. The UBR staff is tough and a 3 is a “meets expectations.” However, it needs to be pointed out they did have a 4 in the very important “beef quality and flavor” category.  And the fries?  They were pretty good too. But, by far, the most impressive thing was the tater tots! Yeah! TATER TOTS!!! Tater tots cooked to delicious perfection none the less!  Unfortunately, believe it or not, Sonic had a near complete fail in the portion category that dragged the score down to a 2.  It was more along the lines of what you would expect from a stupid kids meal. Have you seen Mike? You can’t give that giant Meatsack a kiddie portion and expect a smile. That boy could stuff a train load down his gullet if he wanted.

So, suffice it to say, Sonic was a bit of a disappointment. But we’d like to extend a special thanks to Poops for partaking in our most recent quest for the Ultimate Burger.  And you’ll be glad to know that she gave the ‘Post Burger Experience’ rating a nice ‘solid’ 4 out of 5 stars.

Fatburger – Escondido, CA

Fat Burger

For this review the Ultimate Burger Review staff made their way over to Fatburger in Escondido with guest reviewer Jon Truttmann. Fatburger is a fast-ish burger chain that started in the fifties and they tout fresh ingredients, real ice cream shakes and made to order deliciousness. Sounds a little like In & Out doesn’t it? While there are some similarities you will typically find Fatburger in a strip mall and they spin their burger offerings with a greater choice of toppings that will assist you in your efforts of killing youself faster through bad (but delicious) food choices like adding bacon, chili and fried eggs (why not)! Additionally, they have different burger size offerings. Mike and Jon opted for the traditional Fatburger which is just under a ½ pound while the more adventurous Greg and Troy tackled the King Burger that offers an 8oz patty. Although we should mention Mr. Truttmann took his guest reviewer assignment seriously and threw all caution to the wind and ordered his with fried egg and bacon! The cool thing is you can keep going up in size if you want to an XXL burger offering or the 24oz XXXL burger that rivals IN & Out’s 4×4! Too bad we didn’t bring wingnut Caitlyn because they even offer a Boca Burger for the non-meat eating weirdos. All that means nothing really unless the burgers have a worthwhile yum factor, and Fatburger does have a high yum factor! We were very impressed that they offer different bun sizes for the burgers which kept the burger to bun ratio at an optimum. The only weird thing was that the burgers were built upside down with the cheese at the bottom which caused Troy to deeply contemplate the true meaning of proper burger structure and how it affected the taste. As usual, everyone else just ate their burgers and brushed off Troy’s idiotic ramblings. Another pleasant surprise was the fry options. Yes, they have options! You can get either the standard fry type or go for steak fries! Is that awesome or what? And to top it off, they know how to cook both types to perfection. It’s totally crazy! Needless to say the UBR staff was very impressed with the Fatburger offerings, earning them a 3.3 for the burger and full 4.0 on the fries. The burger definitely had the yum factor, but suffered a bit on the structural integrity and presentation scores. Speaking of presentation, this is where Fatburger lacks. The dull, unassuming exterior is equalled only by the drab interior. They did have some old style T.V.’s, but they failed by making us watch Nickelodeon. Yeah, SpongeBob is just what you want to watch while shoving a yummy Fatburger in your pie-hole. It also needs to be mentioned that this location requires the use of tokens to access a very crappy crapper. I suppose they need to lock it so it won’t get crappier? Anyway, the delicious offerings where still enough to overcome these fails and give Fatburger a 3.5 on the overall experience. Our suggestion, go get fat on a yummy Fat Burger!

Fatburger Curbside

Five Guys – San Marcos, CA

Five Guys Burger

Well the long awaited and anticipated review of Five Guys is finally here!

 Five Guys is a chain of burger restaurants that started out in Virginia in 1986.  They franchised in 2003 they have literally exploded across the US to over forty states. Very impressive to most, but not the Ultimate Burger Review staff. In fact, this was our second visit to the new San Marcos location because the first visit was not good and we wanted to give them a second chance. The first time through the doors, it was jam- packed to the point they were just slinging burgers and fries with nary a care for quality. The fries were an under cooked glob of greasy potato mush sticks. To top it off, the ‘order number barker’, who had clearly enjoyed more than his fair share of burgers, had sweat dripping off his nose as he stuffed food into bags for the throngs of starving carnivores. Troy, being nimble and catlike, luckily jumped on a table that opened up while Mike ordered burgers.  That created yet another problem (although not a Five Guys problem) because Meat Sack (aka. Mike) forgot the say, ”Duh, yeah can I have cheese on, duh, that too…duh”! So I got stuck with a cheese-less cheeseburger.  Yeah, not a good experience.

 Fast forward to a few weeks later and this Official UBR Review. For this review we had a special matriarch guest reviewer Mimi Lamson, mother of ‘Meat Sack’ Mike and ‘Meat Stick’ Greg. Our second first impression was the same; the place is still a damn zoo. Five Guys décor is standard ‘fast-food-like’ red and white trim with sacks of un-cut potatoes stacked throughout (which is kind of cool). Also, they have big boxes of shelled peanuts that you can chow on for free. It’s probably to reduce liability by ensuring that nobody starves to death waiting in the long friggin’ line to order a burger. They also have boastful quotations from random print media of how great their food is. By random I mean they have a sign touting that their fries were voted the best in Kaimin, Montana. How hard could that be? Probably the only fries you can get in Kaimin! Anyway, on to the official UBR review. Our burgers arrived in a brown paper sack, wrapped in tin foil…. Okay. The burger is pretty damn good and scored a 3.31 on the UBR scale of yum (and probably should be higher in Greg’s opinion). And the topping choices are really impressive. But the fries pretty much still sucked. The really sucked the first time and still sucked the second time, earning an undercooked 2.9 on the UBR scale. They would have received a much lower score if it wasn’t for the large portion and the fact that their seasoning is good. A menu item that Five Guys lacks though is milkshakes. Come on! You can’t be a classic burger joint without a milkshake offering! So Five Guys received a lackluster 3 for an overall experience score. In the argument on which is better, Five Guys or In & Out,  you’ll find the UBR “Po Po” in the In & Out parking lot.

Five Guys San Marcos

Phil’s BBQ – San Marcos, CA

Phil's Burger and Fries and Rings oh my!

For this review the UBR staff and guest reviewer Todd Polderman went to the newest, hottest restaurant in North County, Phil’s BBQ. This place is so popular that if you do not get there before 11:30 the place is packed and by noon there is a line out the door. We know what you’re thinking, a BBQ place for a burger? Well, the fact is they actually had one so it must be reviewed. The minute we walked in, it was utter chaos. This place was a machine-like, process orientated slaughterhouse and we felt like the nervous cow. I mean this place made us feel like we had a cheeseburger anxiety disorder. Once we had completed the gauntlet of placing our order we picked up our buzzer and only then can you select a table. In fact they had a big angry sign saying something to the effect “DO NOT SIT AT A TABLE UNTIL YOU ORDER YOUR FOOD!” The other thing is, our buzzer went off three separate times before our food order was complete. The weird thing is they have these table captain type people hovering around your tables.  They were nice and tried to be helpful which begged the awkward question, do you tip them? Although they really did nothing for us other than take our plates (probably to ensure a quick table turn) they were so nice so we felt obligated to leave something. To finish on the restaurant environment, the décor is nice and they did have two TV’s within eyesight of us all. Oh yeah, the burger. The least stimulating part of this review scored a 2.4 on the UBR scale. It was cooked well but it just completely lacked in flavor and it was coupled with a lame presentation. This burger actually earned some ones on the UBR scale.  However, like a redeeming knight in yellow fried armor, there were the fries. They were excellent. A courtesy mention goes out to our Associate reviewer Kristina who attended to check the BBQ offerings for possible future Hunter catering needs and she gave the BBQ high marks. Also joining us was our longtime friend and colleague Lynda who is one of those non-carnivore types that doesn’t understand that meat is proof God loves us because he made animals out of it. To sum it all up, go for the BBQ not the burger, go early and don’t expect a relaxing experience.

Todd and Kristina

Phil's Post Burger

In-N-Out – San Marcos, CA

Check out the 4x4

Since we took on a national chain with Applebee’s earlier this week, and since so many people have asked, we decided to tap the regional chain of In-N-Out Burger with guest reviewer Phil. Phil is also near “Associate Member” status as this is his second review. If you have ever lived in the Southwest you already know, In-N-Out clearly has one of the best tasting burgers you can find. However, since we rate the overall experience (don’t freak out In-N-Out diehards!) they only received a 3 out of 5. One of the coolest things about In-N-Out is their simple, limited menu offerings. Only the true In-N-Out aficionados know the truth that a secret menu exists. Troy happens to be one of those all-knowing types and since Greg was buying he ordered a “Big Rig” (burger with 18 patties), but had to settle for the “4X4” (four patties with four slices of cheese) since In-N-Out no longer offers a burger with more than four patties. While In-N-Out only scored a 3 on the UBR scale, one should never pass up the opportunity for a Double Double or one of their killer shakes.

Phil and Staff

Applebee’s – San Marcos, CA

meh!

Yes the UBR staff will look everywhere and obviously anywhere for the ultimate burger experience. Your probably thinking “why Applebee’s?” Well “Meat Sack Mike” was buying as usual and the big oaf likes Applebee’s so much that he has been crying for literally months to go. At this point both Greg and Troy just wanted to get it over with. Since everybody and their one legged uncle has been to an Applebee’s before, I think we can skip the description since this Applebee’s is like every other one. The reality is their burger is decent and it has some noteworthy points of a hand formed patty, good thickness and a nice burger to bun ratio. We just hope the patty hand former wasn’t the same guy that pissed all over the floor of the urinal thinking that if he didn’t touch his hose he didn’t have to wash his hands. The real disappointment was the fries. A hamster could yack up a better size portion! Additionally, they were so over salted that they were virtually inedible, but we ate them anyway. Joining us on this adventure of mediocrity was our “near associate level” member Rene.

UBR Staff & Rene

The Counter, Carlsbad, CA

The UBR staff at The Counter

For this weeks UBR review we hit “The Counter” at the forum shops in Carlsbad.  We were joined by our trusty ‘Associate Level’ UBR member, Kristina. The Counter offers “locally sourced, sustainable” hippy, blah, blah ingredients and burger patty sizes of 1/3, 2/3, and full pound! The UBR Staff tackled… no make that were destroyed by, the 2/3 pounder while Kristina munched on a petite little 1/3 pounder. Seriously, they need a ½ pound burger offering for us working stiffs (namely us non-sales people who don’t have the luxury of afternoon naps…Mike). We felt way over burdened by the painstaking digestion effort needed to move that “pig in a python” the rest of the afternoon. The ‘Post Burger Experience’ rating definitely leaned towards ‘Problematic’.  And, let’s face it, a 1/3 pound burger is, well, girlie… No offense to our lovely associate Kristina. Anyway, part of our problem could have been the cornucopia of menu check list items for burger upgrades. Troy, for example, opted for adding ham and bacon to his 2/3 pounder. Not wise! Good thing we have defibrillators in our building! The vast list of “killer” upgrades include twelve cheese types, twenty nine toppings (including a fried egg), and twenty sauce types. And they even had four choices of friggin’ buns! So what about the burgers? They were killer! Heck, even the fries were among the best we have reviewed! The only negative for The Counter, besides lacking a ½ pound burger, was the cost.  Way too much! Our per-person meal averaged out to $16 (burger, fries, drink and tip). But you have to give them the yum factor!  So next time you want to drop the better part of a ‘Jackson’ for a burger, definitely consider The Counter!

2/3 Pounder with Ham and Bacon

Bj’s – Carlsbad, CA

While the name Bj’s sounded great, the burger tasted not so great. The UBR crew was, yet again, (somewhat) disappointed with another chain restaurant’s mediocre burger offering. The main problem (and it’s kind of a big one) was that the meat was flavorless and the ‘medium’ burger was well over cooked (though the medium-rare was perfect). They offered two types of fries (included in the price I may add); shoe string and seasoned wedge cut, and the UBR staff vastly preferred the shoe string. One fairly big negative pointed out by our guest reviewer (John “Meathead” Comito), was that the menus were disgusting and smegged up… Fail! However, for the times that you are looking for something else, like a great Belgian beer on draft or pizza (or even a burger for the more undiscerning), then hook it up at BJ’s. They have a great layout; plenty of TV’s and a cool staff (our waitress couldn’t have been better)!   Bj’s earned a respectable 3 stars out 5.

Good Presentation!