Friday Food Review – Beer Burger Bowery

Food Type: Hamburgers & Fries

Price: $$

Taste:
😋😋😋😋

Friendliness:
😊😊😊😊

Service: Fast

Located in the basement of the JAG Laundry on Fairmont Ave., the Beer Burger Bowery offers up fresh hamburgers, hand-cut fries and craft beer. The prices are moderate, with a single burger hovering around $9.00 (no sides or drink included) and daily specials are offered. The dining area only seats about 25 people, therefore the seating is limited. Most of the seating is table and chairs but there are two straight-backed wooden booths for the adventurous type. Plain, brown wrapping paper serve as tablecloths, adding to the impression of a no nonsense, bare bones eatery.

The two specials during my visit were a garlic parmesan cheeseburger with fries ($8.50) and a steak sandwich with fries ($12.95). Since I wanted to try the fries and my goal was to stay under $10, I ordered the garlic parmesan burger.

Each burger is made to order from fresh ground beef. This particular burger, topped with crispy bacon, has garlic and parmesan mixed into the patty. Standard burger toppings are free, but they also offer some delicious premium toppings, none of which I ordered for mine. The shoestring fries are hand-cut and can be sprinkled with Cajun, Old Bay, Spicey Ranch, or Lemon Pepper dry rubs.

The burger was a little smaller than the bun. However, it was of average thickness and tasted good. The bun was not your average hamburger bun. It was light and airy, with an almost flakey crust. It was very good and, aside from where there wasn’t meat along the edges, didn’t overwhelm the burger patty.

For my taste, there was a bit too much garlic and with the cheese having been mixed into the patty there really wasn’t enough cheese flavor. I added some BBQ sauce that mixed very well with the garlic and bacon. The combination made the garlic a little less overpowering and the burger very enjoyable.

I’m not a fan of hand-cut fries because they are rarely double fried to achieve the desired crispness along the outside. The choice of a shoestring cut is excellent for this type of fry as the narrow area makes these much crispier than can usually be achieved with a single frying of thicker cuts. However, there were two drawbacks: there were many fries that were too cooked and they seemed to cool off much faster.

If you have the money to spend, this is a good place to go for a fresh made burger. Although you can get a smaller, cheaper burger with fries and a drink at any of the nearby fast food chains for less than the cost of one burger here, the quality and flavor of these burgers far exceeds the fast food chains. Unless you like shoestring fries or flavoring them with dry rubs, I wouldn’t order the fries. They aren’t so good as to warrant the $2.95 price tag when ordering them as an add-on.

The restaurant is about a five minute drive by car from the Fairmont State University campus. If travelling by FMT bus (free for students), you can catch the Edgemont Loop bus on campus. The closest bus stop on this route is the 3rd Street Bridge stop, a few blocks away from The Burger Bowery. From campus, it will take about twenty minutes to arrive using public transportation and probably faster to simply walk. For more information, click the links below:

Bus Routes
http://www.fmcta.com/Schedules

Beer Burger Bowery
https://www.jagbeerburgerbowery.com/

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