Northbound Smokehouse & Brewpub

The Northbound Smokehouse & Brewpub is a new brewpub in the Longfellow neighborhood of South Minneapolis. They made news before their doors even opened when they offered free beer for life to early investors. Now that they're open, they're serving their house-made brews along with a full bar menu, with nearly everything, including the beer, touched by smoke.

Their burger is billed as a 7oz black angus patty served on an egg bun. Standard acoutrements are mayo, lettuce, and tomato for the $7.25 base price. I added fried onion ($0.50) and 2 slices of smoked cheddar ($1.50) to bring the grand total to $9.25. I ordered mine medium.

I had mixed impressions when it arrived. On the plus side, the thick coating of melted cheese permeated the small pile of fried onions atop the bun, and the lettuce provided was a few leaves of Bibb lettuce -- not something you normally see on a brewpub (or anywhere) burger. On the other hand, the patty itself had a distinctly 'prefab' appearance, with those squared edges that, at best, betray a burger patty made in a burger press but at worst imply something out of a Sysco truck. The cross section showed the meat was cooked very nearly to well-done -- nowhere near the medium requested.

Still, it's the taste that matters. And again, a mixed bag. The beef was decently seasoned, for the most part, but a bit on the dry side and not particularly distinctive on its own. The cheese, when tasted alone, had a nice smokiness to it, but it was hard to detect that flavor in the whole ensemble. The fried onions, though, were great -- they were slightly undercooked so they still had a little bit of that raw onion bite, in both flavor and texture, along with the sweetness of grilled onion. And the bun was fan-frickin'-tastic. Definitely the best bun I've had in a long while here in the Twin Cities -- extremely fresh, a little sweet, tough enough not to fall apart in your hands but soft enough to not interfere with the burger eating experience (I'm looking at you, Rye Deli onion bialy bun), and moist without being soggy.

In the end, though, the bun's perfection wasn't enough to overcome the more fundamental issue with the burger -- the meat's just average flavor and it's overcooked-ness. If you're here getting a beer, the burger is an ok choice, but I'd probably choose something else next time -- like maybe the waffle-batter-dipped fried chicken sandwich, which my friend said was quite good, and is served on the same awesome egg bun.

Northbound Smokehouse & Brewpub

2716 East 38th Street

Minneapolis, MN 55406

(612) 328-1450

Lyndale Tap House

I'm going to say it at the beginning: This is a great burger, and one that I can unreservedly recommend. See addendum at end of review!

Lyndale Tap House is a relatively new establishment on the 2900 block of South Lyndale (duh) Avenue, near Lake St, occupying the former space of jP American Bistro. Their focus, in terms of food, is on so-called "pit beef", which is basically a hand-rubbed, long-marinated, and slow-roasted hunk of beef which is then sliced thin and piled onto sandwiches. I've had their pit beef sandwich before and it's pretty good, but on this particular occasion I decided to try their burger.

They have a few different variations around a basic theme, but I decided to go with their basic cheeseburger (cooked medium) which comes equipped with lettuce, tomato, and battered-and-deep-fried onions on a kaiser roll. To this I added white cheddar cheese and asked them to hold the pickles. Total cost, with the included side of fries: $9.50.

The burger arrived a short while later with a steak knife impaling the whole affair rather than something wimpy like a toothpick. The first impression was great: the burger was clearly hand-pattied, with an irregular shape that couldn't be replicated by mass production. The meat had a nice sear on it and the cheese was fully melted. Cutting it in half revealed a burger cooked perfectly medium all the way throughout. Impressive.

But the really impressive part was that this burger just plain tasted good. The seasoning was spot-on. I mean, perfect, and regular readers (all two of them) will know how fussy I am about that. And the fried onions: some places put onion rings in burgers, which is certainly delicious, but often causes problems with actually eating the thing. The thin fried onions avoid the logistical issues often inherent in onion rings on a burger (such as the whole onion pulling out from inside a deep-fried 'sleeve', uneven burger coverage, and construction-related instability due to the extra height, not to mention that it makes it harder to get in your mouth). In this case, the fried onions added a nice crunch and flavor without any of the drawbacks of full-on onion rings. The bun (actually a kaiser roll) was nicely toasted and had pretty decent flavor and texture, but it wasn't as remarkable as, say, the Common Roots sourdough bun. Still, that doesn't detract much, if at all, from an otherwise excellent performance all-around.

I'd say this is the best burger I've had so far. Go get one, you won't be disappointed.

Lyndale Tap House
2937 South Lyndale AvenueMinneapolis, MN 55408
(612) 825-6150

Addendum 6/6/2013: Last time I had this burger, it wasn't as good as previous times. It was overcooked and dry, and not nearly as well seasoned. Sad.