Burger Crew meeting called to order on Friday, June 28, 2019 @ 10pm.
Members in attendance: Angela d., Sumana S., Trevor Y., Wayne T., Innie C., and me! Dennis K.
Guests: Christian Y., Isabel G.
I. Ordering
There is only one burger on the menu, the self-titled Black Sands Burger, which includes two smashed patties, American cheese, shredded lettuce (which they call “shredduce”… no comment), pickles and onion, all placed inside a toasted brioche bun. As of the time of this review, the burger and a side of fries or salad was $17. Bacon and fried egg add-ons are +$2 each, and I could tell you how much extra it is to make it a veggie burger but I’m fairly certain you didn’t come here to read about that.
II. The burgers
Brioche buns are a dime a dozen these days. The reviews were mixed: some members thought the aggressively toasted buns were nice whereas others thought the buns were forgettable. I think we all agreed that the buns did their job, so to that, two lackluster thumbs up.
The two smash patties were seasoned well and had good flavor, although they didn’t have that truly meaty quality we’ve found in other burgers. The hypothesis is that they don’t grind their beef same-day (not too surprising from a beer-first establishment). It would have been nice to see a little more sear and a have little more juice, but on the plus side, we were impressed the patties were cooked to a perfect medium-rare considering they were smashies. The cheese was overpowering for most (each of the two patties had their own cheese overcoat) but I thought the ratio was awesome and the umami flavor really stood out.
Moving on to the veggies, the crew—to be precise, particular members of the crew—are shredded lettuce haters. Not a deal breaker (obviously) but it sometimes waters down the flavor of the burger when there’s too much of it, so to that end, we were happy there wasn’t much “shredduce”. It was there but most of us didn’t notice (hey, sounds like me!) The pickles were sliced so thin they were translucent and cut long ways like a hot dog. It wasn’t until we tasted them separately that we realized they were bread & butter pickles, aka the inferior pickle, but prepared this way, they weren’t bad at all. Angela thought they were surprisingly nice but Sumana thought it still would have been better with a dill pickle. Pickles can be so polarizing.
III. The sides
The number of people who chose salad over fries: 0. And good thing too because the fries were a hit! They were salty, crispy, and get ready for this: they tasted like a higher quality version of McDonald’s fries, aka the Michael Jordan of fries, the gold standard. I hope this recipe never changes.
IV. Miscellaneous
The place was crowded and loud, not surprising given our visit fell on a Friday night @ 10pm. It was a miracle we found a table that fit all of us but the burger gods were with us that night. Service was really quick too, so a big thank you to our server at Black Sands that night (forgot your name, sorry!) Beerwise, there were only six beers on tap and most of them were IPAs. This is a small shop; don’t go in expecting pages and pages.
V. Value
The members were asked how much they would pay for the burger they ordered. The range was between $5.50 and $14, the latter being an outlier by a wide margin, so the $17 price tag was higher than what we would have liked to pay.
VI. The verdict
Out of 5.0, the scores were: 2.0, 2.5, 3.2, 3.4, 3.5, 4.6.
Next Burger Crew does SF stop: Popson’s, San Francisco, CA.