Sohn

publish Opened 2026-05-16.

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

Korean cafe in Dogpatch that also serves food. They have a galbi (short rib) patty melt here which is basically an unusual burger.

So many seeds!

I liked it! Rating it a 7.5/10 based on My food rating system. It’s actually above RT Bistro in my book because I could comfortably eat a second one afterwards if I were hungry — whereas for RT it would be way too greasy/heavy.

It’s also fairly unusual with a factor of 3 — here’s the unusualness factor breakdown:

• Seedy croissant bun (+1.5 very unusual)
• Kimchi slaw (+1 unusual)
• Beef (+0)
• Light BBQ marinade/sauce (+0.5 a little unusual)
• Cheddar (+0)

What I liked:

• The bun/croissant. I expected to hate this! But it’s the perfect conceivable texture — not too greasy/buttery and not too flaky that it disintegrates when you bite into it. It’s firm.
• The lack of beef oiliness. The patty was surely patted dry to achieve this. It’s nice and clean and doesn’t clash with the mild oil in the croissant as a result. Pleasantly unexpected!
• Generally, the lack of grease/oil. My fingers are usable afterwards! Huge +++. makes it possible to work with the croissant
• Kimchi instead of normal vegetables. The bite of the semi-pickled flavor (more on that later) punches through well.

What could have been better:

• The beef temperature. The patty was cooked all the way through unfortunately, it’s like a medium or medium well done
• The kimchi. I love the concept because pickled vegetables — like a pickle! — is a common burger component, so the acidity should theoretically punch through the savoriness of the burger well. But the kimchi here is barely pickled at all. Idk if it’s just the batch I was served, but pickling more would have bumped this burger up +0.5pts.

I also generally enjoyed a nice variety of bites. some are more vegetable heavy, some are more croissant heavy, some are more meat and cheese heavy. Nice variety.

Also what’s weird is the sesame flavor falls flat. Despite the seed density being practically identical to RT Bistro (obvious from the photo), I barely detected any sesame in this burger. Odd. I would have liked more! Not sure what I’d recommend the chef do differently though; perhaps this is a limitation of the croissant.