Son and Garden

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

Visited 2023-04-28 for Casey’s SF reunion dinner.

The menu was insanely overpriced and the venue occupying this strange limbo zone between kitschy and classy — not really executing fully on either theme. It reminded me of Peppermill in Las Vegas on 2023-03-18, yet somehow both more expensive and less atmospheric.

I got the Good Son Burger, a staggering $32 that contains:

• Waygu beef patty (+0 unusualness factor because this is compositionally the same as a normal patty)
• “Bear belly bacon” (+2)
• Caramelized onions (+0)
• Bacon jam (+1)
• Jack cheese (+0)
• Aioli (+0.5)
• Arugula (+0.5)
• Fried egg (+1)

Total unusualness factor: +5. It also violates the Warren’s long burgers principle.

I feel like I don’t need to cover why a wagyu ground beef patty is pointless. Them offering it was a red flag they’re trying too hard and I’m glad I caught onto that and agreed to split this burger because it was baaad. 2.5/10.

The bacon is really the star of this catastrophe. Idk what “bear belly” 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 hunching 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 this 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 arugula 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.