Seventeen: Burgers’ Landing
You know as well as we do that this blog is not about service. It’s stated clearly in our mission rules that everything beyond the bun (sides, service, cleanliness, etc.) is to lie quietly in the shadows cast by the gleaming, spotlit hamburger. That said, when service gets in the way of said burger, we’re under contractual obligation with ourselves to say something.
Burgers’ Landing closes at 7pm. We arrived at 6:45, which in many cases might be cutting it close but come on! We're talking about a to-go order at a fast food joint. 15 minutes is plenty of time to prepare a burger and stick it in a bag. It’s also, one would imagine, enough time to gather one’s desired condiments while waiting for one’s food, no? No.
Denied.
By the time we rolled in to Burger’s Landing at 6:48 pm the counter girl was already dressed for escape, shoulder strapped tightly to her purse. She was also midway into a DEEP eye roll, presumably provoked by the audacity of our and the other customer’s presence. Even so, she took our order and was polite enough . . . UNTIL we deigned to ask for some mustard. “It’s been put away.” Even her sentence structure was passive. Passive AGGRESSIVE. No condiments?! Come on, man.
Okay—enough about that. Let’s get to it. The burgers were just fine, with the patties being their low point. Flavorless, and chewy in texture. One of us ordered bacon, which was quite frankly the first bad bacon we've had (hopefully the last). It tasted of smoked grease and not in a good way. That said, it did add some nice tooth to the burger.
What was good? The chopped up lettuce onion combo. (We dug.) A bunch of chopped up iceberg lettuce and pretty mild medium diced onions (did they soak these? How will we ever know?) were the perfect vessel for the juicy drippy sauce. This burger sauce was your run of the mill Thousand Island but it had nice crunchy pickle in it pluuuuuus Burgers’ Landing adds dill chips to their burg, which accentuate the tangy goodness. Pickles, after all, are life.
The bun wasn’t some expensive fancy thing but it got the job done. Squished flat due to transport it was somehow able to soak up a majority of the coveted burger juice and still have integrity. Hella thumbs up.
Flat little buddy.
All in all this was a pretty whatever burger for us. We’re sure we'll get it again on the way to some beach party in Quilcene but we can’t see ourselves going out of the way for one in the future. Especially without mustard. Criminal!