A Nice Friday Lunch

Northampton really needs more parking. That garage is just not getting the job done.

Matt, Bill and I went out for lunch at the Northampton Brewery, and got a sweet table out in the beer garden after some old guy told us we shouldn't bother waiting and should go inside instead. Hey, old guy, I'm pretty sure you are not a brewery employee, so mind your business. Also, we ignored him because we could very clearly see a table for 4 people that was unoccupied. Maybe that old guy and his stupid party of 6 needs to go inside, but for awesome people like us, that table will do nicely.

We ordered some tasty beverages, and got down to the difficult task of narrowing down the many choices to a single meal. We also decided that we needed an appetizer of soft pretzels, by which I mean I decided this due to the intense deliciousness of their cheesy beer sauce. You can see the tattered remains of this sauce in the little blue bowl in the picture below. By the end of my fries, that bowl was pretty much clean enough to return to the shelf.

I decided on the Green Mountain Burger, which I ignored during my first pass of the menu because, for no reason at all, I had come to the (incorrect) conclusion that said burger was a veggie burger. This was not the case, as it not only was a beef burger, it also came with delicious bacon. Also, some Vermont cheddar cheese and mushrooms, but most importantly bacon. Check this behemoth out.

To make it even more delicious, Matt donated his tomato to my meal, as he is a weirdo like Melissa and doesn't like tomato. It's truly baffling.

This burger was great! I ordered it medium rare, and it actually arrived as such. You might not think that this is a big deal, but if you've been reading this blog since the beginning then you'll know how little patience I have for overdone burgers. I want them pink and juicy, dammit! And this one was definitely that. I also made myself some of my (patent not pending) Tabasco ketchup for the fries that didn't make it into the cheddar sauce. All in all, a very nice meal.

-Jon

Holy Crap! I Actually Order a Burger

Has it really been 3 months since I last got a burger? Apparently so.

Melissa wanted to go out to lunch after being away in Japan for like a bunch of days, but she had the requirement that we did not go to an Asian place or a seafood place. Since this ruined my plan of going to Sakura (an Asian seafood restaurant, which I only suggested as a way to bust chops), we were forced to come up with a backup plan. This plan became going to Judie's, where it may actually be physically impossible to get a bad meal.

Usually I go with the Southwest-Rubbed Steak, as it is a ridiculously delicious meal that generally provides enough leftovers for a nice breakfast the next morning. However, I felt that for lunch, something smaller might be more appropriate. Like a tasty burger!

I didn't know which burger I wanted, but I finally ended up going with the Cheddar, Onion & Bacon Burger. I figured that all three of those ingredients are good, so combining them together must theoretically also be good. This was a large burger with a lot of onions. That's a good thing.

The combination of cheddar and onions (which I believe may have been consumed before in another form at another burger joint) is a good one, and bacon makes pretty much everything better. My only complaint is that the whole thing could use like one more flavor, even if it's just a little bit of salt and pepper on the meat before it hits the grill. There was just something missing. I still ate the whole thing since it was cooked nicely and was juicy.

On the plus side, those wacky potato things are delightful, and our appetizer of some kind of crazy cheese-covered bruschetta really hit the spot.

-Jon

I'll Pick My Own Toppings, Thanks

I don't mind when restaurants come up with their own ideas for toppings on their burgers, as long as they have a good variety (R.F. O'Sullivan has like 30+ burgers, which is a good amount). However, I am a big fan of restaurants that just have a buttload of toppings that I can mix and match to make my own diabolical creations. Sometimes you just want a bunch of random crap that most other people probably don't combine.

Amherst Brewing Company falls into the second category, and they have a whole lot of toppings to choose from. I was just in the mood for something spicy today, but next time I'm going to make some kind of elaborate monster burger. It shall be the stuff of legends, and many an epic ballad shall be composed in its memory, to be studied by generations to come in place of former material like Shakespeare and that junk. Or probably I'll just eat it, enjoy it thoroughly, write about it here, and that will be that.

For today, I went with tomato, onion, jalapeños and blue cheese. I figured that the spiciness of the jalapeños would work nicely with the... cheesiness of the blue cheese, sort of like hot wings. And tomato and onion are just classic burger staples. The whole thing looked sort of like an Italian flag, in a very abstract way.

Ok, so it really didn't look like a flag, but it did have red, white and green. That's Italy, right? Or Mexico maybe would be more appropriate, since it had jalapeños. I don't know, I'm not a geographer.

This was a delicious burger! Kate says that all I write is that all the burgers are delicious, but that's not true. I only write that about the delicious ones. What should I do, write that they aren't that good even though they are? She is a negative-nelly!

I also got to drink a delicious beer that I've been looking for the last few weeks, which is always a good thing.

-Jon

Happy Birthday to Kate

It's not really her birthday yet, but she still got to enjoy a free lunch at Taylor's Tavern since it's close enough and she got her birthday present from them early. And I got to enjoy a free lunch because Chuck took us out to lunch after we let him toss some old paint cans in our dumpster in order to declutter his garage/yard. It's win-win.

I really wanted a burger that had the sauce they use for hot wings on it, but there wasn't anything like that on the menu and I didn't want to be one of those annoying customers who makes the kitchen do a bunch of extra work. That seems like the kind of thing that would get you a meal with extra spit on it. Instead I went with the Santa Fe burger, which combined the greenness of avocado with the redness of salsa.

This picture sucks. I hate my phone's camera. You can barely even see the sweet greenness of the avocado! There's also a bunch of onion straws on top of it (which were delightful) and cheddar cheese, which keeps the whole thing together. Sort of. I had a lot of trouble keeping everything on the bun since this thing was overloaded with toppings. And that's a good thing.

Also, that's a ridiculous amount of fries. That's like 2 potatoes right there!

I liked this burger a lot. There wasn't a whole lot of salsa, but I think that's better than if it had been too salsa-y since I wouldn't have been able to taste much of the avocado. Also, onion straws are a great addition to a burger. I might have to look into how to make them, and throw them into random dishes. I think they would be delightful on the slow-cooker BBQ brisket I make.

-Jon

Promise Kept

Well, kept so far. But that's a good start.

Kate and I took a mini road trip down to West Hartford for lunch with her friends Nathan and Erin at Plan B, which I am guessing is a restaurant that feels a bit upset at the current connotations associated with that particular phrase. After a short wait (which wasn't nearly enough time to peruse their monstrous beer list), we got a giant booth and got down to the business of burgers and beers.

And our appetizer of Blue Chips, which was like a nacho platter using potato chips instead of tortilla chips and topped with blue cheese, bacon, tomatoes and jalapeños. It was delicious, and a nice complement to my first beer of the meal.

There were a whole bunch of good looking burgers on the menu, and I finally settled on the Chili burger, which comes with chili, obviously, along with monterey jack cheese and jalapeños. The default option for a side is their "Fancy Fries," but there are a whole bunch of other options if that doesn't do it for you. Nathan and Erin recommend the truffle fries or the parmesan fries, and I bet Kate will go for the sweet potato fries next time.

The picture isn't great, but it was super dim in our booth and this was the best I could do. Deal with it.

The burger itself was amazing! I know they have the fresh meat and all that organic crap going on, but they must be doing some kind of delicious seasoning thing to the burgers as well, because it came out nicely. The chili was good, but it actually took away from the burger since the burger was so good. The cheese and jalapeños were also a good choice for toppings. I grabbed an oatmeal stout to go with the meal, and that was also a good pick. But you'll have to wait a day to read about that one because I only do one beer post a day.

Overall, that was a great meal. That place needs to open another restaurant further north.

-Jon