Brioche Cafe

publish Part of a series on The best burger in the bay area.

Simple restaurant with a few locations in SF. On 2026-06-27 I visited their Panhandle location off Haight St — because in January I’d randomly gotten them for delivery and took a note because I liked their burger so much. Today we try it IRL!

Unfortunately this was pretty ordinary. Like a 5.5/10; neither good nor bad.

I liked that the meat wasn’t oily — as you can see in the photo — because it allowed the avocado (not shown) to complement it really well. A nice and fairly unusual flavor combo.

But it’s held back by everything else being pretty mediocre. The burger is small and the meat fully cooked through (instead of medium rare). The bun was an untoasted, generic, store-bought bun with no memorable defining features nor texture despite being a brioche.

So I’d say this burger is a hair better Super Duper Burgers because I prefer its oil/grease distribution. But it’s not exactly a high compliment to praise it relative to a pseudo-fast food burger.

Unusualness factor calculation:

• Avocado (+1)
• Ground beef (+0)
• Tomato (+0)
• Lettuce (+0)
• Cheddar (+0)
• Aioli (+0)

This burger came with fries.

Also, the bathroom came with 3-ply toilet paper. That doesn’t affect this review but deserves mention (heck yeah guys).