Burger #34: Mayberry – The Burger – $10
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| The greens that come with the burger. |
It took me all year to make it, but I finally got out to Mayberry during my Christmas week vacation. I had nothing else to do and I had 5 burgers I had to do in a week so after Culver’s I hit Mayberry, Doris and Sonny’s, Ollie’s Trolley and Tavern on the hill… and I have to say it was one of the best food weeks of my life! If it was not healthy to do 5 in a week, it was even worse to do 3 in 24 hours!
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| The mac & cheese and the garlic butter potato wedges. |
Mayberry is located downtown right next to another restaurant on my list, Roxy’s/Hamburger Mary’s. I rarely get downtown during the week since, as an engineer, I always work out in the middle of nowhere. I like the food choices downtown and if I change my profession soon, I’ll try to find a job near the area. This is the 37th burger I had in 2011 and surprisingly came up as #34 on the Cincinnati top 40 list. I can name so many less worthy burger places that can’t beat the value or the taste of Mayberry, so it may just be that people haven’t tried it yet. I went on Wednesday, December 28th for lunch with one of my good foodie friends. It’s downtown parking, so you’ll have to find a spot somewhere, or maybe I just missed the lot. The space is extremely limited, so be prepared to wait if it’s a nice day out. Luckily a couple left as I was waiting for my friend to park. Mayberry had the best music I’ve heard in a burger place this year because I walked in Rage Against the Machine was on and then it went to Tool! Bonus points. The hours are set up mainly for lunch during the week, and 3 hours for dinner Thursday thru Saturday.
Mayberry has a lot of variety for having such a little menu. The lunch menu has a few salads and a bunch of sandwiches with 3 sides. The jive turkey has turkey on sourdough with havarti, one of my favorites, apricot mustard, and pickled red onion, which is just a unique combination I haven’t seen before. There is a also rosemary pulled pork called the sloppy Josh and a BLT with loca pepper bacon, smoked gouda, leek fondue, and roasted tomato compote. For sides you can get garlic butter potato wedges, tator tot casserole, or mac & cheese. The dinner menu is equally short, but diverse as well. It includes curried carrot soup with bay scallops, maple glazed pork belly with rutabaga mash and creamed leeks, ruby red trout with potatoes, beets, pepper bacon and basil pesto. You can have any 3 plates for 30$ if you can’t make up your mind.
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| That's my #5 burger of the year out of 40! |
There is only one burger on the menu so I will keep this short. The menu changes often, so what you see on the menu now isn’t always what’s going to come on the burger. The Burger starts with half a pound of ground steak with visible chunks of onion and garlic cooked into the middle of the patty that you can see in my picture. This right here gave Mayberry so many points above most other places since I know that this was a fresh patty. The patty came cooked through but it was perfectly juicy and you could taste the seasoning inside of it. It is then put on a Klosterman bun topped with an onion jam, an amazing local pepper bacon and a poached egg. This was one of the best burgers for the price you’ll get in the city and I marked it as my personal #5 burger I’ve had. Since my friend is a foody she MADE me take several pictures just to do justice to the awesomeness of this home made burger. We tried a few of the sides and we really enjoyed the mac & cheese. The garlic potato wedges sound awesome, but ours came undercooked and we couldn’t cut them with the fork, so we sent them back. When they came back they were done, but just didn’t taste like I hoped. You really have to get a good brown skin on the outside to make wedges good.
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| See the chunks of onion and garlic? That is quality rarely seen on this list. |
I highly recommend hitting Mayberry if you haven’t gone yet. It’s #5 on my personal list, and that’s hard to do after 40 burgers in a year. It is moving soon into a bigger venue though, so make sure they haven’t closed yet.
