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Mar. 20, 2009
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RESTAURANT REVIEW: Burger Bar

Still Among the Best: Burger Bar's variety offers endless opportunity for do-it-yourself creations

By Heidi Knapp Rinella
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

HEIDI KNAPP RINELLA
MORE COLUMNS

Review

Burger Bar, Mandalay Place, 3950 Las Vegas Blvd. South; 632-9364

Overall A-

Food A-

Atmosphere A-

Service A-

Pluses: Good, basic food.

Minuses: It can be rather raucous at times.

Burger Bar at Mandalay Place has bar and table seating, plus booths with individual television screens.
Photo by Jerry Henkel/Las Vegas Review-Journal



Burger Bar's Angus burger with bacon and grilled onions.
Photo by Jerry Henkel/Las Vegas Review-Journal



The Double Dog with fries is an alternative in a sea of burgers.
Photo by Jerry Henkel/Las Vegas Review-Journal

No, Al Gore didn't invent the Internet, but I think it's safe to say Hubert Keller invented the upscale burger restaurant.

Keller was in the process of opening Fleur de Lys, an offshoot of his landmark San Francisco restaurant, six years ago when then-management of Mandalay Bay asked him to take over a suddenly vacant spot in the soon-to-open Mandalay Place.

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    • The restaurant originally had been planned as a burger joint of the paper-napkins-and-plastic-tray variety, but Keller has said he decided that if he was going to do it, he was going to do it right. Keller knew that in New York, culinary lion Daniel Boulud had garnered quite a bit of acclaim for his foie-gras-and-short-rib-stuffed DB Burger (which also is served at Boulud's restaurant at Wynn Las Vegas). Inspiration met determination, et voila: Keller's Burger Bar was born.

    A parade of similarly oriented restaurants has followed, and Keller himself has opened another Burger Bar, in St. Louis, and plans a third in San Francisco's Union Square. But while the original Burger Bar may no longer be the one and only, it's still among the best; a recent visit found things at Gourmet Burger Ground Zero to be humming along quite nicely.

    One of the smartest things Keller did when he designed Burger Bar was to offer several different types of beef, in addition to lamb, turkey, seafood and veggie burgers, with a variety of toppings from garden, farm, ocean and more and a variety of breads, all of it to be mixed and matched in endless do-it-yourself variety. Among the beef types is American-style Kobe, or Wagyu beef, from Snake River Farms in Idaho.

    If you have a pre-recession budget and aren't feeling particularly creative, you can have that Wagyu in the Rossini, a "chef's burger" with foie gras, shaved truffles and Madeira sauce. That seemed a little rich for both our appetite and our expense account, but we stuck with the theme, ordering ours ($16.50) simply topped with blue cheese (95 cents) on a ciabatta bun.

    And it was lovely, just lovely, with a buttery texture that was matched by the texture of the cheese and a rich flavor that was cut by the cheese's pungent one. On the side we had zucchini fries ($3.30) to see if they were different from the bar-variety deep-fried zucchini, and these were both thicker, so that the zucchini flavor was more evident, and encased in a much-better-than-average ultra-light, crunchy coating.

    We decided to follow the kitchen's lead on the sliders ($12.50), which were appealing in their variety: buffalo with caramelized onions, Black Angus with bacon and Ridgefield Farms with American cheese, with plain buns and skinny fries on the side. While the buffalo naturally carried its characteristic flavor, the differences between the two types of beef were difficult to detect, especially served in this manner.

    A chocolate burger (a donut with layers of chocolate ganache, passionfruit and mint) had seemed like a good idea on the way in, but not after that rich Wagyu.

    Service throughout was fine, our waitress both efficient and persistent (which isn't always a bad thing). A glass of Franziskaner Dunkel ($7.50) was as cold as it gets (which is always a good thing). And we got to watch the Gonzaga-St. Mary's basketball game on a TV right there in our booth.

    What more could we have wanted?

    Las Vegas Review-Journal reviews are done anonymously at Review-Journal expense. Contact Heidi Knapp Rinella at 383-0474 or e-mail her at hrinella@reviewjournal.com.

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    Fair and Balanced Fred wrote on March 24, 2009 11:15 PM: In a word: "stunning".


    Fair and Balanced Fred wrote on March 23, 2009 10:32 PM: Pretty sad when the right-wing echo chamber has been so effective at misleading so many that even someone who does not self-identify as conservative has bought-into one of their well-perpetuated lies.


    Heidi wrote on March 23, 2009 04:32 PM: Right-wing? Me?
    But good job at making upper management laugh.


    Mark wrote on March 22, 2009 05:20 PM: I ate at the Burger Bar back in January. The Angus Burger was pretty good and the fries ok. What was a nice touch was the beer sampler.


    Mark wrote on March 22, 2009 05:16 PM: I had a chance yo eat at Burger Bar back in January. I found the Angus Burger ok and the fries pretty good. What was a nice touch was the beer sampler.


    Lovey Howell Rinella wrote on March 20, 2009 09:03 PM: LV Diner sez: "Keep up the good work, Heidi. You know more about food, especially Southern food, than this guy will EVER know about the real world."

    The quote above sounds about high-school-level sophistication, perhaps junior-high.

    Anyway, it disempowers Heidi, as if she actually needs protection from high-school-level "LV Diner."

    Anyway, the problem with so many right-wingers like Heidi and "LV Diner" and the R-J is that they can pitch, but they can't catch.

    "No, Al Gore didn't invent the Internet. . . ."

    Ya' gotta love Lovey Howell Rinella.


    JL wrote on March 20, 2009 09:57 AM: While Fred is right on the facts, and Ms. Rinella should stay out of politics in her usually laughable restaurant review column, she's right about Burger Bar. One of my favorite places in Vegas especially to take guests. It's the right price in a nice mall between Luxor and Mandalay Bay. You really can't go wrong here.

    I like Burger Brasserie at Paris, too, but this is my favorite of these types of places.


    Fair and Balanced Fred wrote on March 20, 2009 08:27 AM: ". . . It's a restaurant review column . . . ." in a decidedly right-wing newspaper that perpetuates a right-wing lie in its very first 7 words (and BTW, Lovey Howell Rinella didn't know jack about real barbecue until we educated her).


    LV Diner wrote on March 20, 2009 07:34 AM: Fred - It's a restaurant review column, not a political forum for more of your ranting "fair and balanced" (??) opinions.

    Keep up the good work, Heidi. You know more about food, especially Southern food, than this guy will EVER know about the real world.


    Fair and Balanced Fred wrote on March 20, 2009 07:12 AM: "No, Al Gore didn't invent the Internet . . . ."

    The compulsive liars of the right-wing echo-chamber continue to compulsively lie about Gore's supposed "lie". Actually, Gore never claimed to have invented the Internet but you wouldn't know that by watching Fox. In fact I saw Brit Hume lie about that again a few months ago on the Fox "News" Channel, even after all these years since they hatched this myth.

    Anyway, we know Heidi is teachable because she was actually, finally taught what constitutes real barbecue (smoke), so hopefully we can teach her about the right-wing echo-chamber compulsive liars in regards to the Gore / Internet thing. Have a look:

    http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp

    http://mediamatters.org/items/200701160013

    http://archive.salon.com/tech/col/rose/2000/10/05/gore_internet/

    "Former Republican Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Newt Gingrich also stated: 'In all fairness, it's something Gore had worked on a long time. Gore is not the Father of the Internet, but in all fairness, Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet, and the truth is -- and I worked with him starting in 1978 when I got [to Congress], we were both part of a 'futures group' -- the fact is, in the Clinton administration, the world we had talked about in the '80s began to actually happen.'"