www.koopers.com
The Order: Billy's Kobe, medium rare. Creekstone Farms Premium Angus Beef, foasted garlic cream cheese, arugula, apple-smoked bacon and truffle oil on a freshly baked kaiser roll.
Side Order: Sweet Potato Fries ($1) and a Schwartz's pickle. You have a choice of fries, or sweet potato fries ($1).
$15 + $1 = $16
Drink Order: New Belgium Dig IPA
Burger Menu Rating: 10/15
Having gotten burgers from the Kooper's Tavern Chowhound Burger Wagon on Thursdays by Centerstage in Mt. Vernon, and those burgers having been fairly good, I was intrigued to hear that Kooper's Tavern had a burger that was voted best in Baltimore. My girlfriend, Becky, and I had been wanting to go for quite some time, so we finally decided to make a day of it. The Aquarium, and a burger. Surf and turf, as it were (see what I did there?). Now, it turns out that it was actually the Lamburger a la Grecque that was voted the best in Baltimore (our waitress told us, as well as a recent call to the restaurant), and it sounded delicious, but at the time, I was supremely interested in a beef burger (and maybe a little disappointed that it wasn't one of their regular burgers that won the awards). So alas, next time I will have to try their award winner. This time, I went for the Billy's Kobe. We were there midday, so the service was extremely fast, and our server was very helpful.
Becky is super excited about eating this burger.
When the burgers arrived, we were pretty hungry, but alas, I had to take pictures (Becky dove in, as you can see above). The meat taste was fairly present, but it was cooked just a little bit towards medium, and not the dead-on medium rare I'd expected. It could have also been more of a coarse grind.
A little towards medium.
As for the other ingredients, the garlic cream cheese was an excellent addition. It was light and airy, and not overpoweringly garlicky. I was left with a very minimal amount of garlic breath, but there was enough to add a kick of spice to each bite. The bacon was thick and not soft (both good and bad depending on how you look at it). In this instance, the applewood smoked bacon, on its own, had a lot of flavor, but on this burger, it didn't add all that much flavor. There was a ton of arugula to make a bed for the burger. It was super fresh and tasty, and the truffle oil came through especially strong amongst the greens. Not too strong, but a nice hint to give an earthy flavor to some of the bites.
As for the rest, the sweet potato fries were pretty good. Often I find that sweet potato fries are either under or overcooked, these however, were perfect. The only thing was that they could have used a little more seasoning. They just packed an underwhelming little punch when it came to a tandem flavor. Kooper's Tavern also has a good bottle selection, and a small draught selection. Plus, their Burger Tuesday special of your first Kooper's Yellow Tail Ale for just $2.50 is tough to beat. Belgian Thursdays also has discounted Belgian beers for some really low prices.
After we were done, we were greeted by Jeff Bejma, one of the general managers who had seen my twitter updates regarding Becky and my trip into Fell's Point for their burger. We spent some time talking about the burgers, and Jeff told us a bit about their burger's origin story. Apparently, they got together a bunch of the beef distributors in the area and made them fight to the death. Actually, they had to do a tasting for a select number of people, and the restaurant was then able to pick which was the best blend for their burger. Bejma asked my thoughts, and I detailed a short version of the above. We'll see next time if there have been any changes at all.
You can follow the chowhound on twitter here: @BRGRwagon and Kooper's Tavern here: @kooperstavern
Cooked Correctly: 4
Plating:1.5
Design/Ingredients: 2.5
Value: 2
