I took a little break from burgers since being in New York a couple weeks ago. Since being back, I found a list of the most notable burgers in the Minneapolis area. Maybe not all the burgers are amazing, but the list was a good place to start. The list had several categories, including: thin burgers, tavern burgers, luxury burgers, specialty burgers, and the Minneapolis-known Juicy Lucy.
Burger Jones was under the “thin category,” but you could get specialty toppings on your burger. For instance, I ordered the Hangover which came with bacon, a fried egg, hot sauce, and cheddar cheese. I had to hold off on the hot sauce (my stomach wasn’t in the mood for all that at once). At Burger Jones, you order your burger with “pink” or “no pink.” I found that surprising since most thin burgers are cooked in their own grease and are not cooked to temperature.
My first problem with the menu was that if you go to a sit-down burger joint where a waitress comes to you and takes your order, I think that your order should come with fries. I know this seems petty, but if you order from a window or a counter, I’m okay with ordering the fries separately. Burgers are an American classic; they always come with fries, and if you’re serving an American classic like burgers, why handicap yourself when it is the cheapest thing you serve and makes all the difference? I paid $9.99 for my burger and a $1.99 for hand-cut thin fries. If they charged me $10.99 for the burger and fries together, I wouldn’t be complaining.
Now, to the burger. The presentation was appealing; the burger came served on miniature commercial baking sheets which, I thought, was a good idea. It allowed you to have plenty of room to cut your burger, make a mess, and to spread out overall. The burger came on a toasted buttered sesame bun with shredded lettuce, tomato, and raw onion. The meat, they claim, is fresh never frozen. I tasted the meat alone, and my wife and I both agreed it could use a little help. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t seasoned (salt and pepper), and when looking up good burger recipes, almost every line-up includes salt and pepper. It is hard to write a really good review about this place when the meat lacked flavor. It was cooked to the temperature I requested, but because the meat was ground in-house, I expected a bigger punch of flavor. The runny egg on the burger certainly helped along with the fat from the bacon. The fries were good. How could they not be: hand-cut, crispy, and seasoned. Overall, the burger was fine, but not great.
