A preview of Ballard's The Counter Burger

On Friday night, John and I were lucky enough to get a preview of a new burger joint in town: The Counter Burger.

A delicious burger at The Counter

We’ve been eagerly anticipating the arrival of The Counter for months. The story goes a little like this.

John follows a lot of people on Twitter. One of the people he follows is Jon Favreau. Yes, that Jon Favreau. One day, Jon Favreau twittered something about his partial ownership in a place called Counter Burger. Being the informed husband that he is, John immediately went and looked up their website. After drooling all over his keyboard at their menu, he glanced again at the top of the menu and saw this phrase: “Our 100% natural, freshly ground Angus beef is raised on a vegetarian diet without hormones or antibiotics.” Well this excited us greatly, since we are staying away from CAFO meat. Granted, not all hormone and antibiotic free meat is strictly non-CAFO, but this is a big indicator that the meat might be CAFO free. As we love burgers, and love custom burgers even more, we were excited when they twittered that they were coming to Ballard.

But wait! There’s more! We follow a lot of businesses on Twitter. It is our belief that if a restaurant or business is going to use Twitter, the best way for them to do so is to actually use Twitter. Don’t just use Twitter to advertise. Use Twitter to interact with your customers. We try to answer every @cooklocal message. When a business never answers any @ messages, I will usually unfollow them. Some of our favorite businesses/restaurants/non-profits that use Twitter well are @tidbitbistro, @NFMASeattle, @qafarmersmarket, and @HerbGuy. Well, @CounterBurger is very responsive. Any questions we’ve asked, they’ve answered. (And there’s a bit more too, but that will wait until later in this recap.)

So, now that you know a bit of the history, let’s get to the present. The Counter had three days of preview parties and we were lucky enough to wrangle an invitation. In the interest of fairness and full disclosure, the food was all complementary.  This was a “soft opening”. We paid for our drinks.

When we arrived, the place was hopping. We were shown to a high top table in the bar, and a server who was obviously a little bit nervous (but did just fine) explained The Counter’s concept. Basically, you pick your burger (beef, chicken, turkey, or veggie), the size, the bun (or bowl), standard toppings, premium toppings, and sauces. You write all this down on a sheet and give it to your server along with appetizer, side, drink, and dessert orders.

We chose the fried pickles with apricot sauce for our appetizer. For our burgers we ordered the following:

Patricia’s Burger

• 1/3 lb beef (weight AFTER cooking)
• English Muffin bun
• Onion straws
• Pickle chips
• Horseradish cheddar
• Apricot Sauce
• Fried Egg
• Roasted chilies

John’s Burger

• 2/3 lb beef
• Mixed Greens bowl
• Onion straws
• Roasted Onions
• Horseradish cheddar
• Southwest Caesar sauce
• Chili
• (And probably one or two toppings that we can’t remember any longer)

French Fries and Sweets

We also ordered a half and half plate of fries and sweet potato fries and a peanut butter milkshake. Oh, and two glasses of Snoqualmie’s Naked Merlot.

So, how was it?

Well, I was thrilled with just about everything. The fried pickle chips were easily one of the top two fried pickles that we’ve ever had (the other is from People’s Pub in Ballard, although those are pickle spears and not chips). The batter was light and crunchy. The apricot sauce was tangy and sweet.

The fries were excellent. I realize fries are one of those foods like chili and pizza. No two people like their fries the same way. For me, however, they were perfect. They were shoestring fries, crispy but tender inside. There was a very light spice on them. The sweet potato fries were also excellent.

The burgers were fantastic. The meat was cooked to medium. There was a good amount of pink to the meat still, which I like when I know the meat comes from a source I trust. The toppings were excellent, and my only complaint about any of them was that I ordered too many toppings and the cheese actually got lost. I had to deconstruct the burger when I was halfway through in order to taste each part of the burger individually.

John’s burger was possibly better because he ordered it in a bowl. He was able to take selective bites of the burger with each of the toppings, and this is definitely the way to go if you really want to taste every single topping.

The shake we ordered for dessert was positively orgasmic. It was the perfect consistency to be consumed through a straw and tasted like liquid Reeses Pieces.

So overall, we had excellent food. For this reason alone, we will be back. However one of the best aspects of the meal

Fried Pickle Chips

was the service. I hope that the service wasn’t just a fluke of a soft open, because it was truly stellar. We had servers tag team to take care of us and no less than three other servers refilled water, cleared plates, or checked on us throughout the evening. We were sitting in the bar, so our two dedicated servers were also working the bar making drinks and even so, there was very little delay in anything we wanted or needed.

We also were lucky enough to chat with the man behind the Twitter account, Brian (or Bryan… apologies if I chose the wrong spelling). He recognized us from our Twitter picture and came over to chat. We got a little bit of an insight into the company itself and how they work. There are only 10 or 11 people in the main offices and most of them have been there from the beginning. Though The Counter is a franchise operation, they try to tailor each restaurant to the local environment. Most of the wines on the menu for example in Seattle are local to Washington. They use local produce when possible. They make almost all of their sauces in house and do not use frozen ingredients.

The last piece I should mention is the pricing. For two burgers, two glasses of wine, one appetizer, one shake, and both standard and premium toppings, the bill came to $55 (again, for full disclosure, all but $17 of the bill was comp’d for their soft open). So don’t head to The Counter expecting a cheap burger. However we left pleasantly full and I think for the amount of beef, fries, pickles, and shake we got, the bill was actually pretty reasonable. Red Mill they are not. An upscale burger joint with a full bar and interesting appetizers, burgers, an drinks, they most certainly are.

The Counter opens on Monday, September 21st. We are very much looking forward to going back.

And for another view of The Counter, be sure to see Scrumptious Seattle’s post on it too! We love her and her thoughts also.