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Shake Shack: five years too late

14/7/2013

14 Comments

 
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Let's jump right in here. Is the food at Shake Shack any good? Not particularly. Is the hype justified? Well, hype is by definition hype, but the answer is again no. If McDonalds weren't in the UK currently and they opened their first branch in Covent Garden, pretty sure the blog-sphere would be going crazy about that too. And we mention the big M because when you eat at Shake Shack, you don't find yourself asking 'is this better or worse than Patty & Bun?', hell, you don't even ask yourself if it is better or worse than Byron, but what you do end up asking yourself is 'is this better than McDonalds?'. To be honest, the answer is not really.

Reaching for a couple of positives here, price wise, it's pitched only slightly above McDonalds, at £5 for a cheeseburger. Byron is £6.75 for theirs, and many places are of course £10+. And it is just a fast food kitchen in the same way that McDonalds is: you go to a counter, order, collect your food on a tray, eat and leave. There's some interesting extras on the menu too like 'Frozen Custard'. The milk shake is not bad and the Concretes (frozen custard - basically ice cream) is okay too and comes with various additions like chocolate, caramel and marshmallow; admittedly, the 'concrete' knocks the spots off a McFlurry, but not I would say Ben & Jerry's.

But this is all about the burgers and here, these £5 cheeseburgers in all their forms are simply bland. They are thin, at times have an almost paste like texture so you never really feel you're biting in to meat, and on my ShackBurger (a cheeseburger with ShackSauce whatever that is), it was only the taste of cheese that came through with bread the only texture; both the burger and the ShackSauce were totally lost. On the classic Cheeseburger, the bun was soggy on the bottom and throughout, seasoning was absent.

We note that the menu says all burgers are cooked medium unless otherwise requested and admittedly we failed to mention that medium rare would be the preference but the patties are so thin that we have to believe that medium rare would be a real challenge for them. The result is that after having the burger, you don't really feel like you've had a burger, hardly a result given that the absence of taste is unlikely to be matched by an absence of calories. 

Every blogger  and non blogger is going to go, because you have to see for yourself, so there's no point telling anyone not to bother. But after that, in our view, the fuss will die down and this will be just another burger chain outlet. We doubt this time next year the London food scene will be paying any attention to it whatsoever. Maybe five years ago you couldn't get a decent burger in London but that's no longer true, and whether it's Patty & Bun, MEATliquor, Honest Burger or Dirty Burger, or indeed many other places (the list being too exhaustive to list them all), we believe that there's much more that's much better out there right now. They've won the PR war for sure, but they certainly haven't won the burger wars. 
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the kitchen, pictured from the service counter
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your dining room
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our tray. from left to right, milkshake, fries, Concrete Jungle, Shack-cargo Dog, Cheeseburger, ShackBurger
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Shackburger (front), cheeseburger (rear)
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Shack-cago Dog (Chicago Dog you see)
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cheeseburger (you specify your own toppings)
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Shackburger
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inside the cheeseburger
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half way through the cheeseburger (sorry for that)
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fries
Shake Shack on Urbanspoon
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14 Comments
Tom (Fnd noob) link
14/7/2013 02:05:55 pm

How come you are blurring some of the kitchen's staff's face? PS that patty looks nasty!

Reply
TCC
14/7/2013 02:14:04 pm

we generally don't publish pictures of people on our blog without express permission. this was just snapped from the queue while waiting so i thought i should pixelate faces of staff so that no one is recognisable.

And yes on the patty.

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Jim
14/7/2013 04:23:24 pm

Did the black guy sign a waiver? He seems pretty identifiable.

TCC
14/7/2013 04:25:32 pm

I shall pixelate him right now

Kavey link
14/7/2013 11:45:34 pm

Could it be ShakeSauce rather than ShakeSource? Or are they just being weird?

Reply
TCC
15/7/2013 01:15:35 am

that was just me being an idiot. now corrected

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Kavey link
15/7/2013 01:33:53 am

No worries! You also need to correct the second instance, in the same paragraph. x

TCC
15/7/2013 01:38:07 am

goodness. thanks. that's what rushing does.

Rahul
15/7/2013 01:27:41 am

I asked for my burger to be medium rare and they said no go citing Westminster Council. Plus their beer tap was not working the day I went leaving us to choose from the punchily priced bottled beers. Overall, a huge disappointment.

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Georgie
24/7/2013 03:29:20 pm

Had the same issue, why can't they cook burgers to medium, I have medium in all burger places around and I know thy cook them to medium in the US.

Reply
Claire
24/7/2013 03:26:11 pm

I went this evening and wish I had of listened to your advise.
Service poor, food - burger dry and not seasoned, fries over cooked, I ordered a concrete and it was melted, and the coke was full of ice. Once and never again...........

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Ralph
24/7/2013 03:31:48 pm

I work around the courner and been today for the first time, waiting 10 minutes in the que. Then 15 minutes for the food, it was cold and the beef was poor, dry and tasteless. Thank you Shake Shack!

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Alan Spedding ( cumbriafoodie ) link
25/7/2013 11:59:45 pm

Ohhh dearie me.....how awful does that burger look ?
On the other hand i think the fries look pretty delish.

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Sam link
26/7/2013 02:11:19 am

I have a hangover today and the picture of "inside the burger" actually nearly made me vomit! It looks horrendous! And is that RAW onion? Yuck!

Reply



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