Back Yard Burgers: Dance 10, Looks 3
Written: Nov 01 '02
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Awesome fast food
Cons: Price-atmosphere mismatch
The Bottom Line: A gourmet burger that's fairly priced. Will seem costly to anyone who likes the taste of McDonalds, Wendy's or Burger King. To those with a palate, worth every penny.
|
|
|
| woody_goode's Full Review: Back Yard Burgers |
Style matters. It's one of the dirty little secrets that we don't talk about. "If you do your job well," the big lie goes, "You'll succeed in the long run."
But as the song from A Chorus Line plainly states, it isn't true. I know a guy-- smart, well-spoken, good voice, charming--who currently does the 5:30 news for the smallest station in a small city. He moves regularly; he'll probably spend the rest of his life moving.
The problem is that he's bald. And all the rugs he's tried make him look like a cross between Ted Koppel and James Trafficant. He can be an anchorman--a really good one, in fact. But he doesn't look like one.
So every time the station gets a new program director, they decide to move him out and bring in someone with the right "visual appeal."
If this guy were a hamburger chain, he'd be Back Yard Burgers, a fast-food chain that does everything right when it comes to food.
But they have only 110 restaurants in 17 states--and they'll be lucky to grow much larger. Because the people who should eat at Back Yard Burgers won't go near the place. And the people who do eat there are destined to come out disappointed.
The Joke That Wasn't
I successfully avoided eating at BYB for the better part of two years. The one in my area is located in a suburb that little more than an excuse for strip malls. I could see the little building sitting glumly between the one with the WalMart, Sam's Club and TOPS and the one with the K-Mart, World Market and Regal Cinemas.
To make matters worse, the sign was partially blocked by signage from an Outback and there is an Arby's, a Steak and Shake and a Swenson's (local chain that kicks fast-food butt) close by.
I've consulted for fast food chains; I knew how to judge locations. The placement of the BYB stunk. And since I'd never heard of the company, I assumed it was just an independent struggling to get by, featuring remaindered english beef and fry oil straight from Jeff Gordon's crankcase.
It became something of a joke when friends and I would try to pick a dinner spot. "Hey, I know-- let's go to Back Yard Burgers."
Well, one day, we had a flat tire. And since the driver had worn out the metal pie plate with a rubber band that Toyota calls an emergency spare, we had to call AAA.
By the time we got it fixed, it was 7:15 on a Friday night and every reasonably-priced sit-down place we might have considered was jammed. We were hungry--like headache and blurred vision hungry.
When we into Steak and Shake and saw a line, everyone cursed. "Oh WTF," I said in the lot. "Let's go to Back Yard Burgers. I mean, how bad can it be?"
How bad could it be? Not bad. In fact, pretty terrific.
In Xanadu
There was a mutiny attempt when we entered the parking lot. Scroll up and look at the logo for Back Yard Burgers. Now imagine what the exterior of a building designed by the same mind would look like.
The parking lot was ungodly small; the space allotted to the drive through didn't have anywhere near the proper amount. (The two others I've seen are also like that. The company clearly wants to save space on rent.)
When we opened the door, we got the first surprise-- a sign telling us that all burgers would be cooked to an internal temperature of 155, to avoid any possibility of infection fron e. coli.
"Great," one of my companions muttered. "Wonder if they make us sign a waiver too."
"No, that's really unusual," I said. "Fast food places don't have signs like that."
"Yeah, because they don't poison you--"
"No, because they cook the hell out of everything," I said. "You don't get to choose how your burger is cooked. That sign means that they're going to ask us how we want it done..."
"How about 'edible?," someone cracked.
We were underwhelmed by the decor: very clean, but every bit as tacky as the logo. The booth seating was made out of curved orange laminate; the carpets appeared to have been reclaimed from Herb Tarlek's suits (q.v. WKRP in Cincinnati).
We saw TV sets mounted on the walls of the dining room-- a universal sign that you'll have to wait for your food.
All of a sudden, the inward progress of the group halted abruptly. "Look at that!"
The sign the woman who'd worked as a chef was referring to informed us that Back Yard Burgers used only Black Angus Beef.
And since everyone in our merry band knew something about food, the collective response was "Wow..."
Inside the Back Yard Burger
When you eat a piece of meat, most of what you perceive as "flavor" is determined by two things: The amount of fat in the meat and how evenly the fat is distributed in the meat.
Fat distribution--better known as marbling--controls your tasting experience. If the meat is finely marbled--if it has very small flecks of fat distributed evenly--every bite will seem to be juicy and bursting with flavor. Poorly marbled meat--which has big chunks of fat in some areas and others with none at all--will alternate between tasting dry and greasy.
You can get around marbling issues to some degree, by grinding meat so the fat is more evenly distributed (that's one reason people started grinding meat). But even then, your taste buds will notice.
The Department of Agriculture has established standards for things like leanness ("yield grade"; the scale runs from 1 to 5) and marbling (ranges from 00 to 99). Of the breeds of cattle that are easy to raise in the US, Black Anguses tend to have the leanest and most finely-marbled meat.
Companies that process Black Angus cattle often set much stricter standards about what they'll accept from ranchers, in terms of carcass requirements, skeletal maturity, lean color and texture and muscling requirements. Many require specific feed types and growing conditions.
(If you're curious about what your local store is selling, ask someone in the meat department which suppliers they use and go to www.usda.gov and do a search on their name. If they've participating in the USDA grading program, you'll find the standards on the site.)
To a carnivore, "Black Angus" is like saying "Intel Inside." It's what upscale restaurants serve to customers. Except for Kobe Beef (which starts at about $100 a pound), it's about as good as it gets.
Who Are These Guys?
To return to our story, our skepticism had been replaced by anticipation even before we reached the counter. And when we looked at the menu, everyone's eyes picked out a different thing:
"American, Cheddar, Swiss or Pepper Jack cheese? Grilled mushrooms? Worcestershire sauce?"
"A blackened burger with pepper jack cheese and creole mayonnaise?"
"Hawaiian Chicken with pineapple?"
There were gardenburgers, salads and baked potatoes. Char-broiled chicken and blacked chicken salads. Your choice of waffle, seasoned or chili fries. Hand-dipped milkshakes. And for dessert, apple, peach, cherry or blackberry cobbler.
In the words of Paul Newman and Robert Redford, "Who are these guys?" We had to huddle, to make sure everyone ordered different items.
I drew the double-meat burger with swiss cheese, waffle fries and a vanilla shake. The two patties were 1/3 of a pound--30% more by weight than a Wendy's single or a McDonalds quarter-pounder. And because the meat was Black Angus, it has less fat, so it doesn't cook down as much.
It was char-broiled; cooked medium (they really won't let you order medium-rare, though you can request medium-well or well done) and came with leaf lettuce, red onions and tomato. The mustard and catsup were Heinz; the mayonnaise was Hellman's. The bun wasn't terrific, but it tasted more like bread than other fast-food buns.
I got hosed on the fries. They didn't taste like they'd ever been frozen; they were crisp outside, with a nice potato taste inside. But they're not in the same league with the seasoned. The woman who ordered them had to swat our hands away throughout the meal.
The chicken? I preferred the blackened, but I'm not a lemon-butter or pineapple person. I also don't think the honey-mustard chicken should have bacon, but only because its target audience is probably worried about fat and will be surprised to discover it. That said, it tasted great and you can tell them to leave it off.
A word about the milkshakes. "Hand-dipped" means that someone reaches into a container of ice cream, scoops some out, adds syrup and puts it under a mixing machine. Most other places use a powder with milk solids, add water and artificial flavor and then pump the resulting sludge into a cup.
They do that because studies show that most people prefer shakes that are very thick, with no variation in consistency. A real milkshake will have lumps of ice cream in some spots and be mostly milk in others.
BYB isn't the only place that makes real milkshakes--Steak and Shake does it and I've heard In'n'Out Burger does too (never been there, so I can't say). But it's still nice. And those chains (and others) have required the Big Three to adapt. At one point, their shakes used little or no milk (one place's nutrition sheets said the shakes were safe for lactose-intolerant people). Of late, dairy products have returned to their lists of ingredients.
The cobblers... well, they're bought frozen, from the Mrs. Smith line. But BYB does run the crusts with plenty of butter and sprinkle them liberally with sugar for an extra kick. Not as tasty as Burger King's Hershey Sundae pies, but better for you. And it beats the heck out of fried pies and soft ice cream.
Better Than Mortal Man Deserves?
So why are so many of the reviews in this section mixed? Why does almost everyone mention "small portions" or "high prices"? Because, if you compare their prices to places that look like Back Yard Burgers, the prices are very high. The tab for five people was $40-- eight bucks a person.
In fairness, the eight bucks included two sandwiches each (or a sandwich and a salad) and three desserts. Cut out the frills and you could probably spend about $6. That's still a lot for fast food.
But that's the problem-- it isn't fast food. The quality of the ingredients are comparable to places like Chilis, Friday's or Applebee's. And if you compare its prices to those guys, Back Yard Burger is a lot cheaper.
Unfortunately, those places sell many items that BYB doesn't. So you wouldn't choose it over those places unless everyone wanted burgers.
Another issue is the quality of your palate. If you blindfolded me and fed me a spanish onion, a sweet onion and a red onion, I could tell you which was which. If you've been trained, you can taste whether an item has been frozen before it's been cooked--freezing damages the tissues of both meat and potatoes and takes away both flavor and texture.
(The differences in what goes into the meat can be even greater. One place's supplier cuts costs and increases juiciness by grinding the fat from the liver, kidneys and heart into the mix. Another one injects chicken broth into their breast meat to increase the weight and reduce costs. Some places don't use 100% breast meat in their nuggets-- you eat some amount of ground skin, claws and beaks.)
If you don't care what you're eating--or you like the taste--then paying more for better ingredients won't impress you. If you don't eat the lettuce, the difference between leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce and iceberg will mean nothing. And obviously, if you have kids, price is probably more of a concern than quality.
Delivery speed is an issue. I like having my food cooked to order, but I don't have kids. I wouldn't use the BYB drive-through; every time I've been there, it's been backed up. Given what you get, it's not a long time. But compared to the Big Three, you'll wait. They give you a ticket and call your name-- that can take a while.
In short, you've gotta want the menu that BYB serves. You've gotta be willing to overlook the atmosphere (fast food, but with kids screaming "Mommy I'm hungry!"). You've gotta really care about how good the food is and be willing to pay a fair price for it.
If the answer to those three questions is "Yes", then you've gotta try BYB. I can't definitively state that it's the best hamburger chain in the country, because I hear great stuff about In'n'Out Burger. But it cuts Steak'n'Shake up (and I like those guys). If you're ever in the Midwest or Southeastern US, you owe it to yourself to see how good a fast-food burger can be.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
woody_goode
|
|
Member: Woodrow L. Goode IV
Location: Boston, MA
Reviews written: 35
Trusted by: 23 members
About Me:
Woodrow L. Goode, a management consultant, was Dennis Miller in a past life.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.