I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection.

Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business.

-Michael J. Fox

So here's the thing with mine and Sara's burger rating adventures. We did something very very wrong. Haha. I loved Five Guys a lot, and yet it only got 3.5 stars. So I reconsidered our criteria, decided what was really important, what should we get rid of, what should be worth more or less, and on and on and on. I tried twisting all the different dimensions in every way I could think of to make Five Guys have a higher rating.

I'm not saying that Five Guys is a five-star burger joint. I'm not even saying that it needs to be our highest choice right now (though, it's the restaurant that I've returned to the most, and the best news I've received all week was that they're opening one in Broomfield!! I'm so excited. I've been waiting for this day for months), but I am saying that under no circumstances should Five Guys be rated the same as Carl's Jr. They just aren't on the same level. And no matter how I manipulate things, I can't make it significantly better than a really average burger place.

We've considered what our problem is. I think part of it is that usually when we go out to eat, we're super hungry, so everything tastes fantastic. That's not really something I want to change, though. But it is something we'll have to be more careful about in the future. But also, I'm not sure we've got the right criteria? I'm questioning everything about it. As a reminder, we have:

  Freshness-- which is definitely important to me.

  Juiciness-- also a good one.

  Deliciousness-- I'm not sure about this one. It seems rather vague.

  [Bun-soakage]-- I don't think I can, in good conscience, have juiciness and bun soakage count for and against a burger. If the burger is really juicy and delicious, it's going to have at least a little bit of a soaked bun, and that necessitates that you cannot physically make a 5-star burger.

  Flavor-awesomeness-- I'm not sure how this one was supposed to be different from deliciousness.

  Uniqueness-- though I think uniqueness might be a good quality, I'm not sure it's fair to include in the rating. What if the best  burger in the world is sold in a restaurant that only has this one burger on the menu, the end? Does that make the burger less perfect?

  Condiment-ratio-- ha. I just have no solid thoughts on this one. It still seems somewhat important, but not terribly so.

  [Greasiness]-- still important to me. I don't want my burgers all gross and dripping and like I need to bring Dawn dish soap with me so I can clean up afterward. Sick.

  Appearance-- this is another one that might be a good quality, but is completely unfair. I'm pretty sure we decided to drop it, but all my notes are currently downstairs.

  Side-dish deliciousness and side-dish uniqueness-- first, I no longer think the side dish should be affecting the burger's score. It's not fair. It has nothing to do with the best burger, it's a side dish. And then there's the same "deliciousness" and "uniqueness" problems as already mentioned.

  Price-- this was another one I remember we decided to drop. I mean, if the best burger in the world is a hundred bucks, it doesn't become less delicious. We'll still mention price range, but it's not a factor in how good a burger tastes.

  Fullness-level-- uh, I'm pretty sure we took this one out. Since we've never gone somewhere and not been full afterward. And it was always tricky because you can either still be hungry when you're done (which is bad) or be satisfied (which is good) or be really full (which can easily be bad). Do you down grade them because there was so much food you felt like your stomach would explode? That's just rude. You can't penalize someone for offering more food than you need. Especially if you were dumb enough to force yourself to eat all of it, even though you were full half way though. You could have stopped sooner and not felt like dying.

  [Messiness]-- messy burgers aren't necessarily a bad thing. They aren't necessarily a good thing either, but I think we took this one out.

So what would make a perfect burger? It has to be fresh. It should be juicy. It shouldn't be overly-greasy (but on the other hand, we need to remember we're eating hamburgers, and it comes with the territory a little), and... what? That's it? General happiness?

Once you get down to it, Sara and I are just going to be starting over. We're scraping what we've done so far, and we're going make a better list of criteria, and (re)rate everything.

Which leaves me asking, what's everyone's thoughts? Do we need more people doing the ratings so we can get a better average? That also means not doing them nearly as frequently because we'll have to coordinate more schedules. What makes a burger great?

Please, tell me your thoughts. I can't do it alone.

Five Guys Burgers and Fries: 3.5 stars

Five Guys

They have some fun singing employees here. And our potatoes were from Idaho and Washington today. But it was tricky with the whole "burger" versus "little burger" thing, and not explaining anywhere what that meant. Sara appreciated the napkins. I might, at one point, have said, "It's messy, it's messy, it's messy! Holy crap, I have mushrooms!"

Can I just say that Five Guys is far away? It took us 45 minutes to get there. We looked it up, and the two that were closest (according to google) were in Boulder and Aurora. There was only like a 3-minute difference between how long it would take to get to either place, so we picked Aurora, because I used to work around there ish. When we finally did get there, we ordered a burger, all the way, and a side of small fries. And two drinks. Sara's bun had a hole randomly in the top, so after we took the picture, she put a fry in it.

Freshness: 10,10

Juiciness: 10, 10

Deliciousness: 10 10

[Bun-soakage: 8, 10]

Flavor-awesomeness: 10, 10

Uniqueness: 7, 6

Condiment-ratio: 3, 2

[Greasiness: 1, 1]

Appearance: 5, 4

Side-dish deliciousness: 6, 6

Side-dish uniqueness: 2, 2

Price: 7, 7

Fullness-level: 10, 10

[Messiness: 10, 10]

My first bite. It was a little overwhelming. I've got some more pretty funny pictures of the both of us trying to eat this burger.

Sara's first bite.

So, I really think it would be helpful if, somewhere on this menu, they mentioned that the difference between the burger and the little burger was that a little burger has one patty, the regular burger has two (and if it is actually on the menu, perhaps it should be a touch more noticeable). That probably would've changed our order. I mean, those are thick patties! It's like the size of a homemade burger! I would never double that up. Talk about the mother of all giant sandwiches. And our fries! We got a small, and they still spilled way over into the bag. I'd say we could have filled another half an order of fries. It was pretty sweet. Just waaay more food than I anticipated getting. But they actually had a really cool menu, and I thought it had a unique set-up. You choose whether you want a burger or a little burger, and then you personally go through and choose which toppings you want put on it. The toppings are either listed on the menu in black or red, and if you order your burger with everything or all the way, then you get all the toppings in black. It was really cool. They don't have like fancy different meats for your burger or anything, but this was definitely not something I've seen before. It was fantastic.

As was the burger! So delicious. As I mentioned, it had two thick patties on it, so this was definitely not a lame, dinky little McDonald's happy meal. This was something my jaw barely opens big enough to eat. Pure awesome. And, even though we ordered the burger with everything on it, they didn't skimp on anything. We had tons of mushrooms, more than enough tomatoes pickles, grilled onions. It did make things rather messy. Toppings falling out left and right, juices dripping down my hands, my bun starting to fall apart. I definitely utilized my napkins, and unfortunately, the rating took a pretty big hit because of the messiness, bun-soakage and condiment-ratio sections. Also the side-dish uniqueness. All we saw were fries-- and they were delicious, just not very original.

The toppings that fell out of Sara's burger. Totally enough to furnish another burger!

This was probably one of my favorite places we've gone, though, and I wish there was one slightly closer to home. Sara and I each spent ten bucks, give or take fifty cents, and given how much food we got, that's a pretty good deal. Each time we do this, we finish rating and eating our burgers, and I always go through and calculate what the average rating of the burger was, and then consequently how many stars it gets. We've done one restaurant in the past that I remember being super delicious, but also pretty messy, and so its rating suffered. It makes me feel kinda guilty, and this restaurant falls in the same category. Five Guys deserves a better rating than we ended up giving it. I mean, I stand by each of the categories' ratings, but I wish that I had made some of the categories on a scale of 1-5 instead of 1-10 so that they wouldn't have such a detrimental effect on the overall score.

With the way the math all worked out, though, Five Guys Burgers and Fries gets an average rating of 6.6 from me and 6.3 from Sara, making a total of:

What next?

Alright, here's the deal. When Sara and I started our burger-rating adventures, we had a giant list of places to hit up. Not a physical list, just something we knew about and wanted to get through.

I can't remember anything on there to save my life. Maybe we've already gone through most of the list? I don't know. But now I'm calling on the blogging world to help us out. What places in the Denver/Thornton ish area sell burgers? It doesn't have to be the best burger you've ever had or anything-- it can even be the worst burger you've ever had-- but I'm personally running out of ideas.

Next on our list (maybe this weekend) we're going to Five Guys, so you can leave that off the list if you must.

I know we need to hit up Good Times, McDonald's, Wendy's and Burger King.

We'll probably also get to Chili's, Applebee's, Gunther Toody's, TGI Friday's, Paramount Cafe, and Hard Rock Cafe.

But aside from those, I can't think of anywhere we'll want to go. I know I actually listed a decent amount, but there has to be more! If anyone is aware of anywhere that sells burgers that I haven't mentioned, please please PLEASE leave a comment and tell us.

In this comment, I would like you to say which restaurant it is, and if they sell mostly exclusively burgers, or if burgers just happens to be something they have on their menu. If you know where one is, it'd be cool if you gave us the cross streets, but we can google it so that's not too important.

Please leave ANYTHING we missed. Fast food, sit down, little tiny stands that are chilling out on 16th St Mall. Even if you've mentioned it on a previous post, I would like you to please comment here again. It would be nice to have everything complied into one post so that I know exactly where to look for it.

Where we've already been, for those still catching up: Larkburger, Smashburger, Culver's, Jim's Burger Haven, and H Burger.

Ready... GO!

H Burger: 4.25 stars

H|Burger CO

Apparently this is a sit down restaurant. With loud music/atmosphere, and zombies galore (though that was just from the Crawl). But we're not digging what they showed on the TV. And there is way too much bun for my burger. But the side-dish sauce was so delicious, it made me drool.

Alright. So I used to always drive past this place on the bus to/from school. There were so many hints that this was a sit down restaurant, yet for some reason we didn't really get it until we got there. Sara looked up the menu the day before, and we found that it was a bit pricier (hint #1). You can get vanilla added to any drink for only 50 cents extra (hint #2). And there are a bunch of tables just outside the restaurant, fenced in (hint #3). I'm just not really sure how we missed that. We're awesome. Since it's a sit-down restaurant, though, we decided to get two different kinds of delicious-sounding sandwiches, and then split them in half. Sara got the H Burger (green chilies, bacon, awesome things), and I got the Colorado Burger (lamb burger with feta and some sort of fancy mayonnaise sauce). They each came with fries and this really delicious fry-dipping sauce.

H Burger on the left, Colorado Burger on the right. 

H Burger

Freshness: 10, 10

Juiciness: 10, 10

Deliciousness: 10, 9

[Bun-soakage: 2, 3]

Flavor-awesomeness: 10, 10

Uniqueness: 10, 10

Condiment-ratio: 10, 9

[Greasiness: 2, 1]

Appearance: 10, 9

Side-dish deliciousness: 6, 6

Side-dish uniqueness: 8, 8

Price: 4, 5

Fullness-level: 10, 10

[Messiness: 4, 4]

Colorado Burger

Freshness: 10, 10

Juiciness: 10, 10

Deliciousness: 10, 10

[Bun-soakage: 1, 1]

Flavor-awesomeness: 10, 9

Uniqueness: same score

Condiment-ratio: 10, 10

[Greasiness: 1, 1]

Appearance: same score

Side-dish deliciousness: same score

Side-dish uniqueness: same score

Price: same score

Fullness-level: same score

[Messiness: 2, 2]

Haha. Here's Sara's first bite of... I think the Colorado Burger. Sorry these are so blurry, we were trying to be more discrete since this is a sit down restaurant, so we turned off the flash and it messed with the pictures a little bit.

This is my first bite of the H Burger? I'm not sure. Whatever it was, it was messy.

Sara's first bite of the other burger.

My first bite of the second burger.

So we all get down to H Burger, and we're surprised to find that it's a sit down restaurant. They were pretty busy (Zombie Crawl and all), but we still had acceptable service, and the food was really good. We ordered and it got out to us pretty quick. Sara and I split up our food, and feasted. I personally liked the Colorado Burger more. I didn't really expect the green chilies that were on the H Burger to be sweet. It was still really good and everything, but I was in more of a savory mood that day. The menu was really unique, though, and everything sounded really good. Ally got a Bacon Egg and Cheese Burger. It looked awesome. I particularly like fried eggs on my burgers. Best breakfast to ever exist. They had some really unique side dishes, too. They were mostly different types of fries that we were tempted to get, but they costed an addition 4-6 bucks, and our food already came with a side of fries. I guess we could have subbed something, though. Maybe next time.

We had troubles deciding on how to rate the deliciousness of the side dish, actually. Our fries came with a dipping sauce, and that was seriously the most delicious dipping sauce I've ever had. I literally drooled when I thought about eating it. (Not just now, back at the restaurant.) But the fries themselves were not that amazing. They were alright, still, but not the best fries I've ever had. But are we supposed to give it a low score just based on the fries, or a high score because it came with delicious dipping sauce? I mean, they intended for us to use the dipping sauce. But when we get normal fries, we don't give them a higher rating if they taste better with ketchup. But this sauce is different than ketchup-- it's fancier (heh. What isn't?). We ended up using the score between what we would have given the fries alone and the fries with the sauce.

It was a good place. Pretty loud, we couldn't really keep up a good conversation without shouting a little, but there was interesting stuff on the walls. They had some weird operation on baby's eyes and cleft palates showing on one of the TV channels, which was not appetizing. But they had regular sports and news playing on the other TV channels. It was fun, and really delicious.

Adding up all the scores we gave everything, the average rating for H|Burger comes to 8.4 from Sara and 8.5 from me, making a total of 4.25 stars, but I don't want to make a new picture, so:

Jim's Burger Haven: 3.5 stars

Jim's Burger Haven

I like the vibe. Very 60's. Fun music. The bacon is so crispy :) But people looked at us like we're strange... probably because I was singing and dancing...  There were some nice (though slightly creepy) people there, too. And for some reason that I cannot remember, Sara's notes say, "Twilight zone da na da na." Haha.

Though, to be fair about the creepy people, this place is in Thornton, down off of 88th and Washington.

This was quite a lovely place to eat. I used to pass by it twice a day when I went to school, and I always wanted to try it. We finally did! They have big burgers, and they have small ones, but Sara and I both got small single cheeseburgers, with bacon. We weren't terribly hungry. Then we got a side of fries and a drink. Well, I got the drink. As you can see, Sara has an Amp. I drank a Powerade/Sprite suicide, and when it was about half gone, we added some Amp to that suicide, and it was surprisingly good. And interesting colored. Anyway, back to the food.

 

Freshness: 8, 8

Juiciness: 8, 8

Deliciousness: 9, 8

[Bun-soakage: 1, 1]

Flavor-awesomeness: 8, 9

Uniqueness: 1, 1

Condiment-ratio: 10, 9

[Greasiness: 2, 1]

Appearance: 3, 3

Side-dish deliciousness: 8, 9

Side-dish uniqueness: 3, 3

Price: 9, 10

Fullness-level: 10, 10

[Messiness: 1, 2]

We have found that I do the same thing for the majority of my eating pictures... I'm just trying to concentrate on how well this burger is living up to my dreams!

Sara's first bites are usually more entertaining, though.

So we got in and ordered our food, and it wasn't a terribly long wait. There's fun music and cool things on the wall to keep you entertained. It kinda reminded me of Gunther Toody's, actually. Which is a compliment. I like Gunther Toody's. When we got our food, I was very pleased. I said earlier that I used to always drive past this place, and now that I've finally been, it didn't disappoint. I'll have to remember that when I start up classes again and drive by all the time... That could be a dangerous realization... It was not super greasy, and the condiment ratio was perfect! I didn't have anything dripping out of the end, but you could still taste the condiments. So fantastic. It wasn't messy or anything. And it was a really good price. Sara and I each spent less than $5. If we had gotten the bigger burgers, we would have spent a little more, but I think we're still looking at less than $7. And it was really good.

Honestly, I'm a little sad that it only has 3.5 stars. The things that dragged it down were appearance (haha. Look at my hamburger! It's all crinkly.) and uniqueness. Also side dish uniqueness. They just didn't really have anything special. You could choose if you wanted 1, 2 or 3 patties. You could choose if you wanted them small (4") or large (6"). And you could choose if you wanted bacon added (40 cents for small burgers, 60 for large). That's about the end of the menu. And it was really good, but I don't think I could create a less unique menu. Unless I took off the bacon-option, but that doesn't really make it less unique, just more boring. Bacon is a pretty standard thing to add to your burgers.

The fries were really good, though. Nothing fancy about them, sadly, but side-dish uniqueness got a higher rating because they had something called dino-bites. I have no idea what those are, but they sound pretty unique to me. I'll probably get them someday. We might have gotten them this time if we had seen them on the menu before we ordered. It was pretty good, and I will definitely be back someday. I recommend trying it out.

So Jim's Burger Haven gets an average rating of 7.4 from both me and Sara, giving it a total of about:

Culver's: 1.5 stars

 Culver's

Notes from this lunch: I am totally digging the plastic number thing that all these restaurants are doing where you get a physical plastic number, and then they bring your food out to you. Also, what a delicious shake! But my condiments are coming through the bun. Seriously, where'd that hole come from? The people here talk too fast, ahh. They tricked Sara into getting a double burger! Fiends! The food was slightly chewy, but it was a good float (root beer float, that is).

And yes! The rumors are true! I have now confiscated Sara's Burger-Rating Notebook so that I can put all her ratings and comments in, as well. The way I've set up these posts is: Name of restaurant (in bold), Paragraph incorporating all the notes we took while eating, Paragraph describing food, Pictures of food, Ratings of food (usually mine first, then Sara's), Pictures of us eating, Description of our experience and/ or justification of ratings, Summary of where we ate and average rating, Picture of number of stars awarded to restaurant. You may go back (like you needed my permission) to see Sara's older ratings. Except for Smashburger-- she forgot her Burger-Rating Notebook and instead wrote everything on a sticky note, and has yet to transfer her notes.

Alright. So we get to this place, and it is much more fast-foodish than either of the other restaurants we've been to. So we decided, instead of ordering our sandwiches and getting fries/side dish to split, we'd just each get a meal. We got the uh... bacon something something. Just a bacon cheeseburger, I don't remember the fancy names they gave it. I got regular fries as a side, and a chocolate shake to drink (top). Sara got sweet potato fries, and a root beer float (bottom). Note the random pickle on top of her food. Haha. Excccellent.

Freshness: 7

Juiciness: 3

Deliciousness: 4

[Bun-soakage: 2]

Flavor awesomeness: 3

Uniqueness: 1

Condiment-ratio: 4

[Greasiness: 3]

Appearance: 5

Side dish deliciousness: 6

Side dish uniqueness: 1

Price: 4

Fullness Level: 10

[Messiness: 8]

Freshness: 7

Juiciness: 2

Deliciousness: 4

[Bun-soakage: 2]

Flavor awesomeness: 3

Uniqueness: 1

Condiment-ratio: 5

[Greasiness: 4]

Appearance: 5

Side dish deliciousness: 3

Side dish uniqueness: 2

Price: 5

Fullness level: 10

[Messiness: 8]

Here is my first bite.

Here is Sara's pissed-off-that-you-would-dare-to-take-a-picture-of-me look.

Haha. When Ally took the pictures, she took them right in a row so this is actually just mid-glance for Sara. But I thought it was an awesome picture anyway. Hopefully she agrees ;)

Ok. So, as I believe I said earlier, we got to this place and it was much more fast-foodish than restaurants we have previously been eating at. They still gave us plastic numbers and had people run out and give us our food, instead of making us come up to the counter to get it, but that has little pull in the fanciness of this restaurant. Luckily, the fanciness of a restaurant does not affect the quality of food. At least, not directly. It's a strong indicator of the food quality, but not a direct factor. Sadly, we were not living in the future. The drink machine was just a regular one. And if I remember correctly, it was behind the counter anyway. Don't quote me on that, though. I got a shake, so I didn't care much about the pop.

That shake, man! It was really good. If I ever returned to Culver's (not likely), then I would only get the shake. And maybe some fries. Their regular fries-- the ones I got-- were pretty average. Which is more than I can say for their sweet potato fries. While I may not have technically rated those, I still tried them. They were terrible. Worst sweet potato fries I've ever had in my life. And I like sweet potato fries, so it's not a prejudice I have against the food itself.

Our burgers were... less than par. The meat was really dry, but the tomatoes and pickles kept dripping down and made the burgers pretty messy. And the condiments! Mine had a terrible ratio! I'm serious, at one point, there suddenly appeared a tiny hole in the bottom of my bun that everything just started leaking through. It was messy, to say the least. And the bacon... That was also less than par. It was really chewy. In general, the burger was just not a good experience. But as a plus-- possibly the only plus-- the tomatoes and lettuce and pickles all tasted fresh enough.

When we decided we were done, we still had some food left over. We weren't hungry, so we still gave it a 10 for fullness level, but it wasn't a good full feeling. You know how when you eat a really delicious meal, you might be full afterwards, but you don't feel like crap? You still feel good? That didn't happen here. There was actually a point after we finished eating where I said, "I am not pleased right now. This was not a good lunch." There are not many times in my life where I've actually just been upset at the food I've eaten. Which is a good thing. It reminds me of Ratatouille, where Anton Ego says, "I don't like food; I love it. And if I don't I love it, I don't swallow." There is not even a slight chance he would have swallowed this. I doubt he would have put it in his mouth in the first place.

Oh, and can I just take a second to talk about the price? I paid 8 something for my food, Sara paid 10 something (the reason mine was slightly cheaper was because I got regular fries, and apparently sweet potato fries add a bit of money. Also, I had a single burger, but Sara's cashier confused her and she ended up with a double burger). I paid less to eat at both restaurants we've previously reviewed. And-- AND-- I enjoyed that food. This food was total crap. There is no excuse to sell something so expensive and not have it be amazing. I could expect to go to a sit-down restaurant, even, and get an awesome burger, and still not top how much we paid here. Ridiculous. Ally told us that her family has been coming here for years. I cannot fathom why. Upon further questioning, she said they maybe get it once every 6 months. I still can't fathom why. I'm serious, after eating here, I went running for an hour and then ate fruit to try to cancel out all the bad. I don't recommend eating here. Ever.

So, there's Culver's for you. Mine and Sara's average ratings are 4.6 and 4.5, respectively. That would equal out to about 2 stars, but I'm docking them half a star because I was so displeased after the meal, which leaves them with:

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:

Larkburger: 4 stars.

I once watched an episode of How I Met Your Mother (s4e2) where Marshall, years earlier, ate the best burger in New York, and now they all run around trying to find it again. In this process, they eat at a lot of different hamburger places until they finally find the one that Marshall ate at before, and it is indeed the best burger they've ever had in their lives.

While I like this episode quite a lot, I thought it was going to be about all of them deciding they wanted to find the best burger in New York, and going out and trying a ton of different ones (versus what it was actually about, where they had already found it, they just couldn't remember where it was). That made me want to find the best burger in the Denver-ish area. And I told my friend Sara about this wonderful dream I had.

Unfortunately, Sara (at the time I told her about this dream) was a vegetarian. So she couldn't really join me. And who wants to go alone? Though she did volunteer to come with me and test out all the french fries and find the best kind in the Denver-ish area. But that just wouldn't be the same, so we never actually did it. Fortunately, about 10 months ago, Sara decided, because there was actually animal product in so much of what she was eating without realizing it (jello, pudding, etc), she'd rather just put meat back into her diet (which also means I have a hilarious and terrible story to tell her. I think everyone knows it, but once I finally do actually tell her, I will put it up, just in case).

So, many months later, we actually have decided to go out and find the Best Burger in the Denver-ish Area! We made a list of 14 criteria, and we're rating said burgers on a scale of 1-10 for each criterion. 1 being terrible, 10 being perfect. Most of them are on a positive scale (fresh, juicy, delicious, flavors, uniqueness, condiment-ratio, appearance, price--cheaper price=higher score, and fullness-level, side dish deliciousness, side dish uniqueness), and a few of them are on a negative scale (bun soakage, greasiness, messy). For example, if the burger leaves you feeling full and satisfied, we'd give it a 10-- for being perfectly satisfying. Similarly, if the burger was really greasy and I hesitated to touch anything without first using 5 napkins, it would also get a score of 10-- for being perfectly greasy.

For the negative criteria, when we average out the ratings at the end of the meal, we negate/invert the score it was given. So, averaging the two ratings I listed above, we'd take a 10 for fullness-level as it is, and then we'd flip the 10 for greasy and make it a 0. Then average 10 and 0 together, and come up with 5. It's a little complicated, and I don't really know why I decided that would be the way it is, but it made more sense at the time in my head to rate it like that, and I still know how to do the math for it, so hey. Why not.

[Basically, for the positive criteria, 1=1, 2=2, 3=3... 10=10. For the negative criteria, 1=9, 2=8, 3=7... 10=0.]

Sara and I have a great list of restaurants to try, starting with just fast food joints, and toward the end we'll probably take it up to sit down restaurants as well. We'll be reviewing one restaurant about every two weeks, and we actually reviewed this one last week (so get ready for rating number two next week). One of these places just barely opened off of 120th and Washington, on the southwest corner.

Alright. Now that all that's out of the way, onto the review!

Larkburger

Really cool restaurant. Super awesome customer service. Gotta love the toasted bun. And, they have an awesome drink machine-- I'm livin' in the future! Very eco-friendly. Awesome staff. Clean and fresh environment.

I guess Sara and I actually have really similar tastes in food. Larkburger doesn't actually have a lot of options burger-wise, but they do have a ton of options in total. It's not strictly a "burger joint." They have tons of chicken sandwiches, I think there were a couple turkey sandwiches, and they also have vegetarian food. Maybe they had some vegan food? I don't really remember because we're looking to find the best hamburger in the Denver-ish Area, and so we clearly went for a hamburger option. We just got their regular larkburger (with pepperjack cheese), and garlic truffle fries.

Freshness: 9, 9

Juiciness: 10, 9

Deliciousness: 10, 10

[Bun-soakage: 3, 4]

Flavor-awesomeness: 10, 9

Uniqueness: 2, 2

[Messiness: 4, 6]

Condiment-ratio: 6, 5

[Greasiness: 5, 5]

Appearance: 8, 8

Price: 8, 8

Fullness-level: 9, 10

Side dish deliciousness: 10, 8

Side dish uniqueness: 9, 9

Sara's first bite. She looks confused, but happy.

My first bite. I look betrayed, and not happy. But trust me, that's a look of disbelief that a burger could taste so good.

The food got out to us really fast, and they didn't have a lot of different options as far as what kind of burger you could get, and all the options they did have (that we saw, at least) were regular burgers that you can get pretty much anywhere. So that's why uniqueness got such a low rating. The bun was not soaked until you got to the last couple bites, so overall that was good. Generally, I loved it. I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to get a delicious burger. They don't do combos, and the burger itself was about 5 bucks, then the fries were an additional 2 or 3 dollars. The drink was like 1.50 or something. Not terrible pricing, and definitely worth it.

Let me just take a minute, though, to talk about the future-drink dispenser. It was amazing! It was a touch screen, so you go up to it and think, "Hm. I'll have some Coke!" so you touch the Coke-button on the screen, and it doesn't just give you Coke-- no no. It pops up with a ton of different options! Do you want Vanilla Coke? Lime Coke (pretty nasty)? Orange Coke (also pretty nasty)? Raspberry Coke? Cherry Coke? Vanilla Cherry Coke? Or just plain old Coke? And Fanta! They had tons of flavors for that as well-- I've never even heard of Peach Fanta! But it was an option. So awesome. We actually started off with just a couple water cups, but I made Sara go back up with some money and buy us soda cups because we were both so excited about this amazing machine!

[Funny story, when we bought our food in the first place, Jennifer (the cashier) says, "Do you want any drinks?" "Uh, no. That's ok." "Ok. Do you just want some water cups?" "Yes. That would be lovely, thanks." And then, after seeing the machine, and after we finish our meal, we decide we're going to have to get some soda so we can try it! Larkburger was on me, so I give some money to Sara to go buy the soda cups, and she looks at me incredulously. "You're not just going to use your water cup?" So I quote a little The Way of Kings at her and say, "No. Sara, 'someone has to do what is right because it is right, or no one will follow.'" She takes my money and goes up to get a couple sodas, and Jennifer was also very confused. "You... you don't just want water cups?" "No, we changed our minds..." Haha. Gotta love it.]

[One more funny story: I don't know if the people who worked there thought we were secret shoppers or anything, but we're sitting there, taking pictures of the food, and we've got our notebooks. It looks like we know what we're doing (HA.) and at the end of our meal, one of the girls asks us if we'd mind taking a survey really quick about our experience. Fantastic. It made us laugh.]

So yes. Larkburger was delicious, it gets an average rating of 7.8 from me and 7.3 from Sara, which makes for: