Brooklyn Burger Bar

Hamburg, DE
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

Hesburger

Hamburg, Germany
www.hesburger.com/food



The Order:  Hesburger (Double Burger), with shredded iceberg, American cheese, 3 buns, 2 patties, pickle, ketchup, and cucumber & paprika mayo.
Side Order:  Does not come with a side
€3.50
Drink Order:  None
Burger Menu Rating:  5.5/15




Hesburger is a Finnish burger chain, known in Finland as Hese, with locations in Finland, Germany, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, and Ukraine.  It's had a long history, starting in the 1960's, but really began to grow starting in the 1990's.  It has a larger presence in Finland than McDonald's, and blah blah blah.  None of that is important.  There are four in Germany, three of which are in Hamburg, and two of which are located on the Reeperbahn, the area where I was working.  What you need to know about this place, is that the burger, at the right time, is dirt cheap, tasty, and worth every cent.


This lone man handles ordering and making all the burgers here.

During rush hours, I would avoid Hesburger if I had the time to go somewhere else.  With only one person running the establishment, at least at the location on the east side of the Reeperbahn, the guy makes a ton of burgers, beforehand, in order to handle the lunch and dinner-time rush.  What this means, is while they're still tasty, and inexpensive, they're not fresh, and that's where you really get the value on your burger.  During the rush hours, your burger will have been sitting under a heat lamp for an hour or two before you consume it.  The time to go to Hesburger, therefore, is late at night, after a drink or two, perhaps.


Andy LOVES Hesburger.

A coworker of mine, Andy, LOVES Hesburger, and had been trying to get me to go with him for a few weeks, when finally we had time to go together (Andy had been going virtually every day in the interim).  We walked up to the stand, ordered our Hesburgers, Andy also got a Cheeseburger and waited at the hi-tops.  The sole cook/cashier/order-taker/honcho made our burgers quickly, all the while taking the order of a few drunken German tourists, who were also expounding upon Hesburger's many fine qualities.  The two patties are thrown onto the grill, while each piece of bun is lathered with mayo and topped with condiments, including the cucumber and paprika mayo (by far one of the standouts on this burger).  By the time he's done with that, he slides the patties onto the buns, stacks it all together, and wraps it to perfection.


A shot of the meat, looks like he forgot the toppings on the top half.

The burger is simple.  No frills, just consistency and normal fast food burger taste.  The American cheese makes this burger sweet, but buns are lightly toasted and the shredded iceberg is fresh.  The mayo with cucumber and paprika provides a cool and crisp flavor to contrast with richness of the beef and cheese.  They DID forget to put the toppings on the top half of the burger, which is unfortunate.  With this burger, you don't get to order at a specific temperature, nor do you have any really fancy toppings, nor, apparently, do you really even get something all that consistent.  What you get is a freshly made burger that will certainly satisfy your post work/beer cravings.




Cooked Correctly:  1/5 - Medium Well, can't ask for specific temperature
Design:  1/3 - Cucumber&Paprika Mayo!
Plating:  .5/3
Value:  3/3

The Bird in Hamburg

Hamburg, Germany
www.thebirdinhamburg.com



The Order:  The Breakfast Burger, medium rare.  Bacon, egg, lettuce, tomato, onion, on an English Muffin.
Side Order:  Comes with fries.
11.50€ (About $15.58)
Drink Order:  Anchor Steam Beer
Burger Menu Rating:  12.5/15




In the fall I spent two months working in Hamburg, Germany.  When I'm not reviewing burgers, I travel for work as a lighting designer and assistant designer for theatrical productions.  I was in Hamburg working on Rocky Das Musical (yes... a musical based on the movie Rocky... actually pretty good), and of course, the first thing I think about, when I find out where I'm going to be working, is hamburgers.  Yes, I was thinking about all of the extremely delicious burgers that I would find all over Hamburg.  They would be spilling out of every door, everywhere I looked there would be amazing meat patties, perfectly formed, oozing deliciousness, and beckoning to me from every which direction.  Sadly this was not to be the case (I also quickly found out that 'Hamburger' in Germany can mean something quite different - a descriptive term, rather than actually a hamburger).

I can't tell you just how frustrating it was to even find a single burger joint!  Sure there was Burger King, and McDonalds (more on this at a later date), and Hesburger (a Finnish burger chain - also more on this later), but I was looking for a great burger.  I was in the City of Burgers was I not?!  Hamburg isn't actually called the City of Burgers as I had led myself to believe.  Now I'm not going to go into the history of hamburgers.  It's a sordid and confusing history with many claims to their creation (for a laugh, check out A Hamburger Today's attempt at tackling the question and read all the comments).  The term was most likely coined here in the US, but the meal's origins point to various places in Asia and Europe.  Let's leave it at that.  So maybe it makes sense that Hamburger doesn't have all that many burger places.  Maybe I was looking for the wrong word?  Whatever the case may be, it took me a while to find a SERIOUS burger, and I found it at The Bird in Hamburg.


Chris perusing the menu.

Hilariously, the owner is from New York.  So it's not even really a hamburger from Hamburg.  Billed as a New York Style restaurant with New York size proportions, at least the burger meat is made fresh daily from German beef.  Walking in and looking at the menu, I could already tell that I would love this place.  When you open the menu, it pleads with the eater to "At least TRY to eat the damn burger with your hands" in response to a general sense of decorum in the European style eating; they use a knife and fork for everything (of course, when I dragged my English friend Chris along, I made him use his hands as well).  In a town where all all the ketchup has a curry flavor, there was regular ketchup on the table: a major plus.


Dear Customers... PLEASE!

All of the burgers looked amazing!  How was I to choose?  I figured that I'd be making a return trip soon anyways, so decided to go for the first one that caught my eye: the Breakfast Burger.  With the order into the kitchen, and our drinks arrived (Anchor Steam!  In Germany! And for 4.50€), I decided to get myself into the kitchen for some pictures.  The owner, Tim, was kind enough to show me around the kitchen as our burgers were being prepared.


The kitchen staff weren't expecting a visitor.


Pre-plating, two with secret crack sauce.


 
Onions, bacon and delicious goodness.


The burgers are done!  Note the English Muffins!


The Breakfast Burger as it arrived.

When the Burger arrived it was glorious-looking.  Served on an English Muffin (I love that), this thing was a hefty burger.  The burger was slightly under-cooked, but apparently there's a different standard for meat temperatures in Germany.  The patty was well balanced, and huge.  It had great fat distribution, a fantastically coarse grind and was well salted, bringing out the meaty flavors to mix with the other ingredients.  The egg was warm with a somewhat runny yolk that was a little burned around the edges, and could have stood to be a little runnier.  The bacon on top was salty, and firm, but not hard.  The other toppings were fresh, though I didn't put the lettuce, tomato or red onion on top.  The English muffin was a bit small for how big this burger was.  If the idea was to create a messy burger, they did a great job.



The fries were good, a perfect size.  They were well salted, and tasty to dip in the ketchup, or the crack sauce (amazingly tasty!), but they got to be a little too greasy as the meal progressed.  The homemade hot sauce was nicely spicy, but a little low on flavor.  It's there, but it doesn't add much more than spice to anything.

All in all a good meal, and a great find in the St. Pauli/Reeperbahn area.  I ended up back there three or four more times.  If you go, I recommend trying the Da Birdhouse, the Big Crack and the Fat Stingy Gonzalez (mmm guacamole and salsa verde done right).  The Dr. Zian is good, but the Stilton Blue Cheese is really strong and doesn't achieve a balanced flavor.




Cooked Correctly (German standard): 5/5
Design: 3/4
Plating: 1.5/3
Value: 3

Hamburger Fail

I managed to execute one of the bigger tourist faux pas the other day. Not speaking a word of German, but thinking I was pretty safe in what I was doing at the time, I ordered a Hamburger Riesen Knacker.  And I was kind of excited to be eating a hamburger, after all the myriad kinds of sausage I'd already consumed in my first week here in Hamburg.  However, upon trying to order this hamburger, I was instead served 3 massive sausages (bratwursts).  Fail.  I'll not be fooled again Hamburg(er)!