12.04.2010

Is The Back Bay Social Club home to Boston's Best Burger?

I had visited Boston's relatively new Back Bay Social Club, located right on Boylston Street, across from Hynes Convention Center, a couple month's ago for a Citysearch event and had liked the atmosphere and enjoyed a wide array of pork-themed eats.  Since then, I've been dying to give their burger a try.  Rumored to be one of Boston's best, their burger has been getting a lot of buzz, which made for a perfect destination for this Friday's Burger.

Back Bay Social Club - Boston's Best Burger?
The words that first come to mind when taking a big bite out of the Back Bay Social Club's burger - juicy, cheesy, meaty, delicious and expensive.  To help dissect this famed burger, let me break it down for you to give you my take of this burger:

You can actually SEE how juicy it is!
Juicy: This was definitely the first word that came to mind upon digging into my burger.  Served up on a square wooden plank, there's pretty much no polite way to eat it.  Be prepared to have delicious juices literally running down your arms, all the way to the last bite.  So much so that by the end of the meal, my crisp white cloth napkin looked like it had been through battle.  Certainly not a bad thing, this burger was the juiciest I've ever had and was cooked to a perfect medium-rare.
Cheesy: Although I always could use more cheese, I felt that the intensely sharp cheddar really provided a prominent flavor.
Meaty: This certainly was a meaty burger in all contexts of the word.  It was big and so flavorful with bright meaty notes.  In addition, the intense meaty flavor was balanced by sweet and perfectly caramelized, thiner-than-shoe-string onions.
Delicious: Such a generic term but well fitting here.  This burger was delicious.  The bun was the best bun I've ever had, similar to a Portuguese roll, it was toasted to perfection and covered the burger entirely.  This is the way burger buns should be.  Not too big, not too small, just right.
Expensive: There's no way around it, this burger is expensive.  Clocking in at $21, I was left questioning whether I'd go out of my way to do it again.  While my burger was accompanied by a grease-spotted brown bag of generously portioned under-salted petite shoestring fries, I felt the portion of the meal was appropriate.  No doubt, this is a delicious burger but it seemed to lack the glitz and glam that makes paying top dollar worth it and such a weighty cost seemed a little out of place in this casual dining restaurant, with most other lunch items ranging from $10 - $15.

Back Bay Social Club French Fries
That being said, this is a very good burger but if I'm going to spend $21 for a burger, it's still going to be the Bristol Burger.

Back Bay on Urbanspoon

5 comments:

Kristen said...

fabulous review! I'd love to give it a try but $21 is seriously nuts.

Anonymous said...

That bun looks seriously good. I'm no meat eater but I know a burger that big and juicy requires an appropriate bun. I want those fries now.

Jane said...

Sounds like a great burger! I loved your review. I wish I could go to Boston more often and enjoy all the great food there. I live over an hour away and never seem to find the time. Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

Stephanie said...

When I lived in Boston we went on a hunt for the city's best burger. My favorite was the burger at Abe & Louie's. When we first starting going there the burger was extremely affordable at $8 but over the four years we lived in Boston the burger went up to $13. I thought $13 was a little steep, but $21? Ouch!

Chomp Chow Chew said...

I'm so glad you reviewed this burger, I've been wanting to try it! Your pics look great and I'll take your suggestion of the Bristol Burger!

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