What's in a name?

A lot, it turns out, or at least that's my opinion of Shake Shack.

Everyone talks about their burgers; they seem to have become the NYC standard for burgers; all season long, Madison Square Park is mobbed with lunchers. Surprisingly, I'd never actually had a Shake Shack burger until yesterday, when I found myself around there on errands. So I had a burger (and fries, and a malt).

It was a very good, perhaps great, burger, but I don't understand the cultlike devotion. Joy is better, Blue9 is better, even some of the remaining outposts of Soup Burg (whatever they call themselves now) have served me better burgers. The meat, I could tell, was definitely something special, and there was good char, but it just didn't come together as a spectacular burger. It was, in an inversion of my comments on Joy, juicy but not moist, the bun was overly dense, and while the lettuce was nice, the tomato was just unappealing.

On the other hand, the fries were quite good, and the shake was phenomenal. I like frozen custard, they actually had malt, they found the proper consistency point between the overly-thinned shakes one often gets and the barely-loosened cups of ice cream one sometimes gets, and it was just a well made shake.

So yes, if that's where you are, I would certainly suggest getting a burger at Shake Shack (if the line isn't currently visible from space), but I wouldn't suggest traveling for their burger.

I might, however, suggest traveling for their shakes.