www.brooklynburgerbar.de
The Order: The Def Jam, medium rare. Beef with Fourme d'Ambert, Arugula, Beefsteak Tomato, and Bacon Marmalade.
Side Order: Sweet Potato Fries, with Red Ranch Dip. Fried in Canola oil and tossed with sea salt and cayenne.
€10 + €4,50 = €14,50
Drink Order: Pilsner Urquell
Burger Menu Rating: 9/15
I know what you were thinking. A new burger place in Brooklyn! Well you thought wrong. Sorry to disappoint. But for all you Germans reading this. YOU can be excited about a new burger joint in Hamburg! The new Brooklyn Burger Bar (the 2nd "NY Style" burger restaurant in Hamburg), from owner Steffen Schröder of Streit's Lounge, is doing some interesting things with their burgers, and with a dedication to sourcing locally, and making everything in-house, you can be sure that they care about their product. The buns are made by a local bakery that uses only organic ingredients for the buns, delivered fresh every day. The same goes for all the sauces they use. The beef is supplied from a distributor in the north of Germany. It's grass-fed and the cows are raised (somewhere) in the north of Germany as well.
As far as taste goes, this burger is doing something right, and something a little different, but it's really difficult to put my finger on it. The Fourme d'Ambert, one of the oldest French cheeses - a blue cheese - adds a nice musky flavor, but overall this burger is really salty, and it's salty to a point of distraction! Perhaps it was the bacon marmalade, which was delicious and added a nice texture that was slightly buttery but with big firm chunks in it. My experience with bacon in Germany has been that it's generally very salty, so perhaps the bacon and the amount of salt they used on the patty combined to overwhelm the rest of the flavors of the burger. That all being said, there were some other spices in play here that I couldn't exactly figure out. It was almost a combination of Middle Eastern spices, or some kind of curry powder on there as well. There was a distinct tang to the flavor of the meat that I was able to discern that had me very excited.
The Def Jam laid open. Unfortunately overcooked to medium, instead of medium rare.
The other thing about this burger was that unfortunately as I ate my way from the center to the outside, it got less and less exciting. The patty was overcooked (-1) to begin with, but then it was also very unevenly cooked. Towards the edges, the patty became completely gray, dry and a bit tough (-1). This burger could have easily scored an 11/15 just by cooking this correctly. Perhaps they didn't compress the center of the patty, and maybe the grill wasn't hot enough. Either way, the cooking of the patty could use some help here. Overall there's room for improvement on the burger. Being cooked correctly would be the first major order of business, and then balancing out the flavors would follow. If they can pull that off, they'll have one heck of a burger here.
The sweet potato fries and spicy ranch dip are pretty stellar. If you're reading this Steffen, PLEASE DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING ABOUT THEM! They were addicting and perfect. A tiny bit of smokiness, the right amount of salt and cayenne, and the ranch dip made these things impossible to put down. By the end of the meal, we were all full, but still chowing down on our healthy portions of fries. €4,50 is a bit steep for this side, but I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't pay for it every time I went there.
The Brooklyn Classic, with Romaine, Beefsteak Tomato, Red Onion, Pickles and Ketchup.
Aside from burgers, which dominate their food menu, Brooklyn Burger Bar also serves two salads, two other meat dishes (the chili sounds the most intriguing), and a boatload of delicious cocktails. We sampled a few that were all spectacular. Given Schröder's bar experience in Hamburg already, this is nothing less than should be expected from his new venture.
If you're planning on going here, plan on being disappointed. Not by their food. When we left were full, and satisfied. No, plan on being disappointed by the inability to get a table at this place. Two of us had to email and call multiple times to try to get a reservation. Here's an insider's tip: make sure you try to make the reservation at least two days in advance. However, this isn't a guarantee that they'll actually write you back. Don't bother calling, and don't bother sending them an email like their answering machine tells you to. Send them a message through their Facebook account. It took them a full day and a half to write back to me to tell me they didn't have a reservation for me, by which point my friend had a reservation already (who wrote a day after I did).
If this doesn't say 'classy', I don't know what does.
On top of all of that, everybody in town is talking about 'the new burger restaurant on Alter Fischmarkt by the Scientology place' so don't expect to be able to walk in and get a table, or even a seat at the bar, unless MAYBE you get there right at 6pm when they open, and they're in a charitable mood. They're swamped every single night, with every table booked. If the masses are any indication, they're doing something right. Granted the burger scene in Hamburg isn't much to speak about on the whole, but as they get settled get everything figured out, and if they can make some major, but easy, improvements, Brooklyn Burger Bar is sure to be a fixture in Hamburg for years to come.
Cooked Correctly: 3/5
Design/Ingredients: 2.5/4
Plating: 2/3
Value: 1.5/3
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