As of Friday, October 16th, 2009, the Burger Bar in the Macy’s department store (6th floor) at Union Square, San Francisco is open for business. The restaurant is owned by the famous chef Hubert Keller from Fleur De Lys and it is the third Burger Bar location to open up. The other two being in Las Vegas and St. Louis, MO. Unlike the Cheesecake factory, the elevator up to the restaurant stops on every single far. I’d avoid it during peak hours and take the escalators.
I had the pleasure of visiting and dining at the Burger Bar on opening day. Of course, being opening day, business was booming, with a one and half hour wait to get seated. Fortunately, since it is inside Macy’s, my party did a little shopping before hand.
The restaurant has a bar area but I didn’t bother to order a drink from there with the amount of people waiting. Seating seems a little limited, but if you could request a seat, try to get a booth with the tvs so you can watch a game. The place was decorated like a burger / bar joint but I couldn’t get away from the white walls, it just didn’t match.
Onto the service, the hostesses were nice and talkative as they escort you to the table. Our waitress was polite and friendly, and it seemed like they all were well trained to do business at a Hubert Keller restaurant. Our waitress forgot to bring us water and we had to remind her, but that was my only complaint there. I don’t know if it was just opening day, but they had a ton of staff, I saw more waiters and busboys than required, sometimes I saw them waiting doing nothing. The wait for our food seemed like eternity but I’ll cut them some slack for the first day.
Now the food. My table of 3, ordered a Kobe burger (~$17), Hubert Keller Burger, Sliders, side of sweet potato fries and 3 types of milkshakes. Most of the burgers are custom made, they come only with lettuce, tomatoes and onions. You have to order all the extra sides you want like, cheese, grilled onions, mushrooms, half lobster tail, etc.. They have some pre-set burger meals like the Hubert Keller Burger which is a Buffalo Burger, caramelized onions, baby spinach and blue cheese on Ciabatta with a side of fries. Fries are a la carte otherwise, for a normal burger order, with your choice of skinny, fat, sweet potato fries, buttermilk zucchini fries ranging in the $3-$4 range. The portion of fries are pretty tiny for the price. The kobe burger was alright, I ordered medium rare, and it came out brown, but the Hubert Keller burger was ordered medium rare as well, and came out pink. I was wondering if we had the same chef grilling?
And finally the taste… The burgers were alright, nothing fancy, nothing great, not worth the $16. A regular Angus burger starts at $10 which may have been worth it, but the Kobe no. The milkshakes were fantastic, but not that you can screw them up too badly. Next time, if there is a next time, I may be forced to try the $60 foe grais burger, or a surf and turf, meat and lobster just cause a normal burger here didn’t appease my burger appetite.
We ended up paying $100 for 3 people, 3 burgers, 3 milkshakes, side of fries. That would be the most expensive burger meal I’ve had! It maybe a long time before I go back.
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