Smashburger: 3.5 stars

Smashburger

Sara and I think it's important to note that, as we were reviewing Smashburger, we were super hungry. Some fun quotes from this particular lunch: "It got on my bun!" and, "You are juicy." Haha. Made us laugh.

The day before we ate here, Sara also made me choose whether we were going to try to order roughly the same thing at each restaurant or take the specialty from each restaurant. At first, I had decided 100% that we needed to get roughly the same thing at each restaurant because that way we could see which burger joint cooked the best. But then-- and it was a sudden flip in my decision-- I realized that we're not looking for the best burger joint, we're looking for the best burger. And the two are definitely related, but to find the best burger, we absolutely need to be comparing each burger's specialty.

That being said, the next day, once we got to the Smashburger, I had forgotten my revelation that we're looking for the best burger. So we got almost exactly the same thing that we had at Larkburger. Haha. Oops. Maybe, to make up for it, we'll just have to re-rate Larkburger and Smashburger and get something more specialty-ish. We did decide that we have to be eating the same kind of burger, though, so at least we got something set that we've managed to keep up. We both got the Classic, and Sara kept hers with American Cheese (left) and mine is with pepper jack cheese (right) because, come on. Pepper jack always wins against American. Most things do. And, as a side, we got smashfries (french fries with rosemary and maybe something else).

Freshness: 9

Juiciness: 10

Deliciousness: 9

[Bun-Soakage: 1]

Flavor-awesomeness: 9

Uniqueness: 7

Condiment-ratio: 3

[Greasiness: 2]

Appearance: 7

Price: 8

Fullness level: 10

[Messiness: 9]

Side dish deliciousness: 7

Side dish uniqueness: 5

Sara's first bite. Haha. My picture was actually taken first, so in this one she's just trying to top me by going cross-eyed.

My first bite. What was going through my head was that scene in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days where Andi is eating a burger for lunch, and her boss tells her to take smaller bites on her date that night. We're super attractive, right?

Smashburger is actually set up really similarly to Larkburger. Or maybe Larkburger is set up similarly to Smashburger. Either way. The food got out to us pretty quickly, they both have the awesome futuristic drink machines. It was all fun and lovely. No one came to ask us to fill out a survey this time, sad. Haha. But it was still good. They brought it out, and mine was actually really messy. It was ridiculous. I used at least 10 napkins. And I'm not that big of a napkin-user. I mean, I use one when I need to, but I don't usually use ridiculous amounts or anything. It wasn't greasy or anything, it was just messy. Condiment-ratio was allll kinds of off. But, as a nice bonus, this one didn't come with a wrapper around it, so its excess and messy juices would have just fallen to the tray, and left all of the bun complete unsoaked. Of course, that means it was a little more messy, but hey. Win some, lose some.

The fries were lovely as well. I quite enjoyed them. They were particularly salty, but still good. Not terribly unique, but more unique than just regular fries. It got a pretty average score there. And the price was about the same as at Larkburger-- just under $5 for the burger, a buck or so for a drink, and a couple bucks for the fries. Not too bad, and the food was definitely worth it. It was really good, and I would definitely go back. I had to fold my lettuce over. It was far too large for the burger, and it kept getting condiment on my hand! Drove me crazy, but once I folded it over, it was totally fine.

As a side note-- and it wasn't a problem with this burger, so it was penalized at all here-- the first time I went to Smashburger, the burger was as greasy as a pubescent teenager's face. It would have easily scored a 9 or 10 had I been rating it (which would have been pretty detrimental to the score, equally out to be a 0 or 1). I'm lead to believe that it depends on who the cook is? I don't know. I've been twice since then, and it wasn't a problem at all. I just don't want someone to go and happen to get a ridiculously greasy burger and be like, "Bridget, what's your problem? That was terrible and it ruined my experience! You couldn't have warned me?" because people I know and am friends with have gone their first time and gotten a really greasy burger, and now refuse to go back. It's happened to me, but so far, it's been the minority of my experience. And I would suggest giving it another shot, if that was your first experience.

That's Smashburger in a nutshell. It was fantastic, and gets an average rating of 7.3, making: