Just down the street from where I'm staying in San Francisco, the magic words are writ large above the door; Polker's Gourment Burgers - Polker because I'm on Polk Street. Well, it would be rude not to.
Inside it's relatively up market as befits it's Gourmet tag. It's not a 100% specialist as there's a bunch of other non-Burger items on the menu. The Mexican (chorizo + beef patty, fresh salsa, garlic fries) caught my eye and was duly ordered.
That stuff that looks like grated cheese on the fries isn't. It's grated Garlic. about a bulbs worth I reckon. I'm pretty sure there was more of the stuff in the salsa too to go with the onion bite, so I therefore re-christened the whole affair The Vampire Killer.
Unfortunately, the sheer volume of garlic involved meant that it did an effective job of masking the burger itself, a schoolboy error of allowing the distinguishing factors to overshadow the main event. Texture was good and it was a reasonable size, but beyond that I couldn't tell you much. Certainly didn't get a huge amount of chorizo when I sampled just the patty directly. Fries were (again) merely ok, the bun didn't cope well with the fresh salsa though, coming apart towards the end under the pressured onslaught of tomato juice. Lettuce leaf, red onion and pickles were under the bun lid, again adequate.
If it's all sounding a bit meh, you're right. After the genius that was Ford's Real Hamburgers, any burger would find it a tough act to follow. In this case, takeaway the garlic explosion and there may have been something good there, but my instincts tell me otherwise. And so we score; remember, 0 is for not present, 1 is merely functional, 2 is adequate, 3 is good, 4 is really good and 5 is OMG-can't-talk-eating.
KBI-1 : Quality of Burger | 2 / 5 |
|---|---|
| (Beefiness, quality of cooking, not getting lost in the extras) | |
KBI-2 : Distinguishing Features | 3 / 5 |
| (i.e. The 'headline' variation e.g. Bacon, Chilli, BBQ) | |
KBI-3 : Ability of Bun to Maintain Order | 2 / 5 |
| (size, freshness, flavour, keeping it all together) | |
KBI-4 : Condiment Enhancement | 2 / 5 |
| (variety, suitability of extras) | |
KBI-5 : Fries Counterpoint | 2 / 5 |
| (portion size, crispness, potato-ey ness) | |
KBI-6 : Other Supporting Actors | n/a |
| (quality of side orders) | |
Total Score | 11/25 |
Hi Robin,
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