Chili burger: a quick discussion

This post almost didn’t happen. As you know, today’s the last day of the month, and as of yesterday, the only sandwich I’d eaten on this month’s portion of the list was the chicken salad sandwich (see previous post). However, yesterday afternoon, I was in Richmond’s Carytown neighborhood with my girlfriend (yes, I have a girlfriend now… I’m as amazed as you are), and she randomly decided we should eat at Carytown Burgers & Fries. I don’t make it to this excellent locally-owned burger joint as often as I’d probably like to, but I always have great meals when I hit it up, so I was totally in favor of this idea. Then I remembered that I still had a couple days left to write about a chili burger–perfect way to kill two birds with one stone! I was officially stoked.

Carytown Burgers & Fries has a ton of different imaginatively topped burger combinations on the menu, and the chili cheeseburger is actually one of the more basic options, coming with chili, cheese, lettuce, tomato, onions, pickles, mayonnaise, and mustard. I had them leave the onions and mayonnaise off of mine, because raw onions on a sandwich have always had a weird flavor and texture in my opinion, and you’ve already heard way too much about how much I hate mayonnaise. Allison was more adventurous, ordering the Greek Geek (a Greek-style burger with feta, tzatziki sauce, roasted red peppers, and crushed garlic, plus lettuce tomato & onion), but I had my assignment and I stuck to it. We also got two orders of fries, one with cheese and one without–which turned out to be a mistake (more on that later).

While I love both chili and cheeseburgers, this was actually my first time eating a chili cheeseburger, and I wasn’t sure how much the two flavors would affect each other upon being combined. Carytown Burgers are notoriously drenched in toppings, and I have made a ridiculous mess of myself on multiple occasions by eating their salsa/sour cream/guacamole-topped Pancho Villa burger (a personal favorite). I was therefore expecting the chili to totally overwhelm the burger and get all over the front of my dress by the time I’d had two bites (I was wearing dark colors, but still… not exactly a desired outcome). However, the chili turned out to share equal billing with the rest of the toppings, mostly retaining its position at the top of the burger, just under the top bun.

Look how big this thing is.

I had to open my mouth very widely to bite into the burger, and the first bite contained a good bit of chili, so I definitely experienced the mingling of bun, burger, condiments, cheese, and chili from the very first bite. I had expected more of a half-chili/half-burger flavor experience, but found instead that the chili took a back seat, mainly adding a bit of spice to the typical burger-with-all-the-fixin’s flavoring that dominated my palate. That wasn’t a bad thing by any means–hey, I love burgers. But I’m not sure this taste experience is something to really get all that hyped about, at least as a separate sandwich experience from regular ol’ cheeseburgers. Where Carytown Burgers is concerned, the Pancho Villa or the Flying Squirrel (a burger named after the local minor-league baseball team, which features peanut butter and bacon and comes between slices of Texas Toast) constitute a much bigger taste departure, and hell, even a Mushroom-Swiss Thickburger from Hardees is quite a bit more distinct from a typical half-pound burger than this chili cheeseburger was.

Cross section of a chili burger.

That’s not to say it was a bad meal. I still scarfed it down quickly and with gusto, making a dent in my plain order of french fries while doing so. Allison was enjoying her burger, but kind of wondering why she’d ordered so many fries, especially with cheese on them. We agreed that we’d probably have been better off just splitting one order. Lesson learned. She ended up only getting about a third of the way through the Greek Geek, and we polished off the remaining two thirds at 2 AM that night, splitting it while watching episodes of Black Mirror on Netflix. I like this particular burger enough to find it tasty as hell even cold, and Allison felt the same way.

As for the chili burger, if Carytown Burgers’ version is any indication (and it probably is–they’re one of the two best burger joints in this city), it’s a decent meal as those things go, but doesn’t quite live up to what the name would lead you to expect. I really think I might dig it more if they found a way to infuse the burger with quite a bit more chili–dipping the top bun in chili sauce before serving it, perhaps? On the other hand, I made it out of the place without staining my outfit, and if they’d done that, I can’t imagine I’d have been so lucky.

Drew

I’m a transgender weirdo who loves music, books, comics, and all kinds of other geeky crap. I edit an arts/music/culture magazine in my hometown of Richmond VA (rvamag.com). But let’s not talk about my day job. Let’s talk about food. I love food.