Son and Garden
publish Part of a series on The best burger in the bay area.
Went here 2023-04-28 for Casey’s SF reunion dinner.
The menu was insanely overpriced and the venue kind of in this limbo zone of kitschy and classy — not really executing fully on either theme. It reminded me of Peppermill from Vegas on 2023-03-18 but somehow more expensive and way less atmospheric.
I got the Good Son Burger, a staggering $32 that according to their menu contains:
- Waygu beef patty (+0 because this is compositionally the same as a normal patty)
- Bear belly bacon (+2)
- Caramelized onion (+0)
- Bacon jam (+1)
- Jack cheese (+0)
- Aioli (+0.5)
- Arugula (+0.5)
- Fried egg (+1)
Total unusualness factor: +5 I feel like I don’t need to cover why a wagyu patty is pointless. It certainly a red flag they’re trying too hard and I’m glad I caught on and agreed to split this burger because it was baaad.
The bacon is really the star of this catastrophe. Idk what this shit is but it’s terrible: literally 1/4-1/3” thick of sinewy, chewy pork meat. It’s too thick to be bacon and too oily and chewy to be a pork chop. My teeth would slice cleanly through every part of the burger except this, requiring me to double over my food like a gazelle hunched over, shielding its meal from the gaze of its peers.
There are other issues too. The aioli + egg combo is just way too rich and oily, and the buttered bun didn’t help with that. You basically need to wipe your hands on a napkin after every bite and even then, your hands would still be oily. The bacon jam was overwhelmingly sweet, which made the combo even worse. The jam was clearly made from cubes of the same “bacon” topping, which left a confusing texture of “I’m not sure whether I just chewed the bacon that tumbled into my mouth just now, or whether it’s just hanging loose off the burger.” The cubing of the bacon didn’t help with the sinewy texture of the meat so even in this pre-chewed state, it wasn’t very tasty.
The argula added a refreshing punch but it was barely detectable within the hurricane of aforementioned flavors.
2.5/10. I was starving today and barely wanted to finish my half. I skipped the fries. The crazy thing is that removing the stupid “bacon” from this burger would have elevated it to a 4/10, which is what I did after getting halfway through it and just wanting an edible meal.
Potato wedges were included in the price. But I didn’t finish those either by how bad they were. They didn’t come with ketchup and the sauce they did come with was intolerably sweet.