Salted Caramel Custard at Shake Shack

A number of elements came together last night to convince me that a stop at the UWS Shake Shack was a necessity:

1) It was over 90 degrees.

2) The A train just wasn't coming and the C offered a welcome respite from the sweltering platform.

3) Jon's in Florida and I was in no hurry to return to my empty apartment.

4) SALTED CARAMEL CUSTARD is Shake Shack's Monday flavor-of-the-day throughout August.

5) I still hadn't been to the UWS Shake Shack outpost. A visit was long overdue.

Inside, I hopped on the "C" line for cold food and ordered a single dip of salted caramel custard in a cup with their seasonal fruit, blueberries, on top. I waited less than a minute in line and less than a minute for my treat, a welcome change from my experience at the downtown Shake Shack, admittedly usually earlier in the day.

The custard was in some ways just what I was looking for. It tasted almost exactly like the inside of a Fran's salted caramel but with a cold, creamy texture that went down like silk. Unfortunately, it wasn't as refreshing as I'd hoped. In the hot weather, it was both a little too sweet and a little too salty to satisfy my thirst for cool. The blueberries helped cut the sweetness, but at $1.25 for approximately 15 berries, they certainly weren't a bargain.

Overall, I'm glad I tried it but if anything, it only makes me more eager to return on Thursday for Sweet Corn.

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.