Burger Crew meeting called to order on June 4, 2023.
Members in attendance: Angela, Innie, Trevor, and Wayne
I. Ordering
Angela/Innie: Chori Dream (chorizo smash burger, sous vide 60 min egg, dream spread,
pickled jalapeño, butter toasted martin’s potato roll)
Trevor/Wayne: Supreme Dream (Thicc bacon, smash chorizo burger, sous vide 60 min egg, dream spread, American cheese, pickled jalapeño, sliced avocado, butter toasted martin’s potato roll)
Trevor also added a potato smash patty to his Supreme Dream.
II. Burgers
The reason that everyone got burgers with chorizo patties was because they had run out of beef patties by the time we got there even though we were there by noon. This was an ominous sign of how Breakfast Dreams runs their operations…
Regarding the burgers we did get, the first thing that everyone excitedly agreed on was that the sous vide eggs in the burgers were amazing. The yolk was runny but was thicker than other traditionally runny egg yolks (like sunny side up), so it didn’t make a mess in your hands while eating the burger. The chorizo patties were smashed, which gave them a nice crisp on the outside, and they held up surprisingly well because when I watched them being smashed, some of them seemed to be splitting apart, but in the assembled burgers they were fairly intact. We suspect that they were made entirely out of chorizo because it was very flavorful the way that you would expect chorizo to be, but it also wasn’t overly salty like you might expect a purely chorizo patty to be. We couldn’t imagine what the burgers would taste like with regular beef patties because the combination of flavors worked so well together with the chorizo patties.
Everybody also liked the pickled jalapenos and dream spread that was in all the burgers. There was also a hot sauce on the side that was spiced but not overly spicy with a short, mild burn. The buns were also a hit with nice soft texture and sweet taste. The burgers were also deceptively small, meaning that we ended up becoming more full off of them than we thought we would be based on how they looked.
For the Supreme Dream burgers, the avocado added a nice creaminess, and the thicc bacon was cooked perfectly with a nice chew to it. Trevor thought that the potato patty (which was like a crispy hash brown) that he added to his burger was a must, but Angela wasn’t a fan of it, thinking that it diluted the otherwise perfect construction of the burger.
III. Sides
There were no real sides to be had. Breakfast Dreams only really offers additional toppings for the burgers, like avocado, double bacon/chorizo, or the potato smash patty.
IV. Misc
It took FOREVER for us to get our food. If you come to a pop-up for Breakfast Dreams, don’t plan to eat for an hour after you place your order.
Everybody put in their orders around noon, and despite what seemed like no significant crowds, we didn’t get our last order until 12:50, so it took nearly an hour for them to complete all of our orders. While I was standing by their booth waiting for our orders to be called, it seemed like they were only sending out one assembled burger every five minutes (I wish this was an exaggeration), and when I was watching them put the patties on the griddle, they were only using half of the griddle space. The only time that I saw them use the entire griddle space was when they needed to cook more bacon, in which case they filled the other half of the griddle with bacon. Apparently that half of the griddle is only for cooking bacon…
While the patties were cooking, they would only lay out the ingredients for one burger at a time (like the buns with everything else but the patty). The logical thing to do would be to lay out multiple orders with everything but the patties so that they could just put the patties on and serve the order, but instead they would put a patty on one burger and then wait to assemble the ingredients for the next burger sequentially. It was actually pretty infuriating to watch considering how long we had to wait. Also, besides running out of beef patties, they were also close to running out of buns. I don’t understand how either of those two things could happen considering how slowly they serve their food.
Other miscellaneous for this particular event (which was some kind of off-roading swap meet) was that parking was a little hard to find, and there was also nowhere to eat so we ended up eating in the back of Trevor and Angela’s car, but these were unique to this event so who knows what other Breakfast Dreams pop-ups are like.
V. Rating/Value/Verdict
Wayne: 4.1/$13
Trevor: 4.8/$15.50
Innie: 4.6/$10
Angela: 4.2/$14
Everyone really enjoyed their burgers and if we were to judge Breakfast Dreams strictly on the burgers we got, they get very high marks. However, their questionably slow business operations annoyed everyone immensely. Hopefully they can get their sh*t together and churn out burgers at a respectable rate.
Next Burger Crew meeting, we’ll finally get to go to Chicago in July after many false starts and delays!
