City magazines are a great resource for finding the latest and greatest within the local limits - food, happy hour specials, shopping, spa service and events. They're always up-to-date since they're right in the mix of the local beat. San Diego magazine's June edition featured a listing of San Diego's Best Restaurants 2012.
Slater's 50/50 is listed as the reader-elected winner of: Best New Restaurant, Best Happy Hour, Best Burger, Best Beer Selection and Best Late Night - and I think that's all. It has also been featured on The Food Channel show Food Paradise: Bacon. Making time for a visit here is a no-brainer. Did I mention it's only ten minutes from the airport?
The burgers are delivered with the knife stabbed through the center. It holds everything together; there's basically whatever topping your little heart desires. With nine meat options (including a portobello), five breads, eleven cheeses, over forty toppings and twenty sauces, the place offers the best assortment to design-it-yourself (although sun dried tomatoes and muffuletta could be added).
50/50 is coined from Slater's signature patty that consists of half ground bacon and half ground beef. Yes, that is correct, and it's every bit as good as it sounds. Bacon is one of the most popular burger toppings, but it can be difficult to bite through and savored only in a few bites. With Slater's signature 50/50 patty, there's bacon in every single bite.
In good fun during election month, the two founders designed the November Burgers of the Month. The Brad featured a standard Sterling Silver beef patty infused with sweet Heinz 57, while The Scott patty was infused with the ultra savory A-1 Sauce.
The burgers become gargantuan once a few toppings are selected. This monster was being attacked by an older woman sitting across from our table. You guessed it, more than half was taken away in a to-go box.
We were supposed to name our burgers once we designed them up. Mom, who's always been easy to please - Dad would take her out for a nice steak dinner and 'every time she'd order a cheeseburger and a coke' - appropriately titled her classic sandwich laden with pickles, raw onion and cheddar cheese: Cheap Date.
For my concoction of banana peppers, pickles, Swiss, tomato, raw onion and avocado, which are typical toppings for me at home, the burger was named: Dani California.
The 50/50 patty was juicer than I had expected and was packed with flavor. You can see below that the meat remains pink despite being cooked to medium-well because of the ground bacon.
Our sauce assortment included bacon ketchup, TapitÃo ranch, bacon mayonnaise and avocado. There was also Sriracha around.
The fries are fresh cut and fairly thick served with the house bacon ketchup. While I love macaroni and cheese, the balls with bacon inside were overwhelming with the breading and frankly not worth the calories.
Slater's 50/50 is located in Liberty Station, which was the first US Naval base in San Diego. The barracks have a traditional Spanish Colonial Revival style of architecture. Each has found a new life filled with restaurants, offices, shops and workout facilities.
Inside the atmosphere is cool and clean with plenty of TVs for watching the games. And with one hundred and eleven (111!) beers on a tap, everyone should be able to find something to suit their taste. I couldn't even fit all of the tappers into one photo! If I hadn't already been won over by the fifty-fifty patty, being a Wisconsin girl, the plethora of beers would've done the trick.
The owners are opening a new location in Pasadena, California by the end of the year, and with their flare for understanding how people want to build burgers, I wouldn't be surprised to see a location pop-up out of the state at some point soon.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment