KRONNERBURGER POP-UP AT THE MILL IN SAN FRANCISCO...GETTIN' SALTY ON DIVISADERO
Divisadero has become the new hot bed of hipster restaurants in San Francisco. The strip of street from Haight to Golden Gate is trying to rival the Valencia corridor for must eat places to go. From
Ragazza to
Nopa to
Bar Crudo to
Blue Jay Cafe to
Little Star Pizza to the newest
La Urbana and a soon to open barbecue joint by the
4505 Meats guys. One other newish place along the strip is
The Mill--a large scale mostly bread bakery and coffee shop. They've become a go to place for buns and bread for restaurants, food trucks and pop-ups. One such pop-up,
Kronnerburger, decided to do their pop-up out of The Mill instead of their usual Mission locale. I've been wanting to try them for awhile as I'd heard good things about their burgers and figured this was a good opportunity to check them out without slogging to a Mission bar at night. (yes, I'm that lazy sometimes) Turns our word gets out and there was a pretty decent sized group of folks in the place when we got there. A peg leg wearing crowd of hipsters with facial hair, flannel and bikes from
Public Bikes.
They were serving a limited menu here with the regular Kronnerburger, some beetroot burger, a wedge salad, a shell bean salad and potato chip poutine. I was with the SO and we just went with the known and got 2 burgers and the potato chip poutine.
Their normal poutine is actually over fries. Here, the beef cheek gravy with onions and white cheddar cheese curds is over house made potato chips--which was kind of a mistake. I'm guessing they didn't do fries here since there was probably no deep fryer and you can make potato chips ahead of time, but fries you cannot. The gravy just made the chips soggy and not fun to eat. The gravy was okay if a bit on the salty side--something that might have been okay if they hadn't salted the chips also. All the flavors there might have been just got lost under the weight of salt. After a minute of serving it all became mush texture and neither one of us was able to finish. But it looked good when it came out.
The burger was basic lettuce, fresh tomato, mayo and homemade pickles on a bun made by The Mill. I really liked the bun, it was like a brioche bun--nice crunch on the outside, soft on the inside and it held together well again the juiciness of all the items. We both would have liked it toasted a bit though. I liked the tomato and pickle addition as they both tasted fresh and gave some great color. The burger itself, well, I had to think about it a day before deciding, I wasn't really a fan. I know I'm probably going against the tide, the SO did enjoy it, me, I just thought it was undercooked and over salted. Turns out--that's their big thing. When you check out their website menu, the words RARE and SALTY are right there under their name. And when they say rare they really mean it. The inside of my burger was right on the edge or rare to raw without enough of a sear on the outside to hold the burger together. When I bit into it, it became all mush and no texture or heft you word get from a more firm burger, thank goodness for the crunchy lettuce. The bun had more firmness. Because this was a limited pop-up they didn't have some of their other offerings like marrow additions, grilled corn, onion rings, etc. I'm torn whether I should make the venture out to the Mission to try more items or not. Even if they cooked the burger a bit more it would still be way too salty. Too much salt dries out my tastebuds and makes them feel like they've been scalded by hot food which pretty much kills any other flavor there may be.
I realize I'm probably in the minority here as KronnerBurger tends to make those lists around town of the best burgers. And of course, the SO enjoyed his. Take this review as you want with the caveat that I do agree with their menu that it's rare and salty, for them that's a good thing, for me, not so much.
