Barney's Gourmet Hamburgers

Barney's Gourmet Hamburgers
225 26th St
Los Angeles, CA 90402


Rosa's Take:

My Burger: A bacon cheeseburger cooked medium-rare that started out with onions, lettuce, tomato. Ended up stripped of toppings and doused in ketchup and mustard.

The Side: The spicy curly fries were the
highlight of the meal. Crisp, hot, and fresh. And served with a side of ranch dressing that also ended up on my burger.

Verdict: Have my taste buds died? I tried hard to taste this delicious-looking burger, but the signals were not coming through. First I removed the large pile of cold and leathery bacon. How can bacon not taste like bacon? Off came the overly wet lettuce leaf, then the too thick slices of red onion.

More ketchup, more mustard, more pickle. That helped, and I powered through as the bun fell apart. Finally, I finished the large, boring, pink burger and called it a day.

Steve’s Take:

My Burger: A blue cheeseburger cooked medium-rare topped with bacon. Lots of bacon.

The Side: The “Steak Fries” I ordered were separated-at-birth twins to the “Fat Fries” from Fat Burger. Maybe Barney’s wants them to appear healthier by not referring to them as “fat.” I like these fries, but with the French burger the proper side would’ve been the sweet potato fries with ranch dressing that Richard had.

Verdict: Amongst the daunting array of available burgers I zeroed in on the “French” Burger as it came just the way I like it – with no veggies. Overall I was more satisfied with my burger than the rest of the group. The French comes with a French bread bun which held up much better than the standard buns and complemented the meat pretty well. While the bacon wasn’t the most flavorful, at least there was a ton of it. Because of the fact that it didn’t have a strong taste, it didn’t overwhelm the burger like bacon sometimes does.

The biggest complaint I had was that there was a minimal amount of blue cheese. Factoring in the price, however, it’s hard for me to recommend Barney’s. For almost $16 including the fries and coke, I could’ve had three In-N-Out meals. That’s hard to justify in this case.

Richard's Take:

My Burger: The standard bacon-cheeseburger with cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickle. I smeared on a bit of special sauce (standard thousand island).

The side: Sweet potato fries. These were pretty good, thick cut fries, much better than the standard freezer fries everyone else got. As a group, we decided that the spicy fries were best, followed by the sweet potato fries. We would not order the standard fries again... and DO NOT order the garlic.

Verdict: I asked for my burger medium-rare (as usual), and it came rare... very rare! The burger was so juicy, it eventually made the bun disintegrate. The bacon clearly had been made hours before, and crumbled onto the burger. The texture of the bacon was like little rocks made of pig. The veggies were ok, but the burger patty was good. Really good. At the end of the meal, I was absolutely stuffed.

Now that I think about it, the best way to sum this thing up is to do pros and cons. Con: relatively expensive ($15 meal), horrible bun, horrible fries, and amazingly horrible bacon. Pro: great, great patty. I think the burger itself transcended the cons. I would give Barney's one more shot to make me a regular, which is better than any of the other burgers I've reviewed here. It could have been the area, it could have been the sunny day, but I had a pretty good time with my crappy burger.

TVE's Take:

My Burger: Medium-rare patty (that ended up being beef tartare), with excessive amounts bacon, 1 leaf of lettuce, and red onion on a regular bun. Added ketchup.

The Side: Garlic fries where the skinny fries were topped with a scoop of out-of-the jar chopped garlic. BLEAH!!! They didn’t even bother heating up the garlic. The extra $1 I spent for the garlic was highway robbery!!!

Verdict: My “medium-rare” burger was still moving and bleeding all over my brittle already disintegrating bun. Giving up on the conventional way of eating burgers (with your hands), I tried to “de-bun” my burger for a formal eating method (knife and fork) but remnants of the bun glued itself to the patty. That wasn’t the worse part. The excessive amounts of bacon normally would whet my appetite. However, excessive amounts of 2-day old fried flavorless bacon did not have the same affect. It’s pure talent to mess up bacon. Overall, it was my worst experience yet!