Every 8 weeks, my boyfriend Gabriel and I donate blood and then go eat burgers to replenish our iron levels. I personally think it’s one of the most romantic ways to spend a Sunday afternoon, and I love that we have started this tradition. Yeah yeah, I understand that not everyone may think that getting stuck with a large needle is very romantic, but as far as I’m concerned, potentially saving 8 lives between the 2 of us is a beautiful way to share the love…and if it means that eating a burger can be easily justified, well that’s just a double bonus 🙂

We alternate who gets to pick the burger place, and it was his turn this time. After walking around Central Park for most of the day, we found ourselves back on the Upper East Side near where Go Burger had opened this past winter. It had some pretty good reviews online, and sounded like a worthy choice.

When we got there it was relatively empty (since we were there at the weirdo dinner time of 5pm-ish) and we were seated right away in a booth in the back at our request where the air conditioner, thank GOD, was blasting.  When our waiter came to take our order, we found out that Go Burger is part of the ‘BLT’ restaurant group, and since we’d recently tried BLT Fish and loved it, we were excited to see how this meal would be. We asked his opinion about the various kinds of fries, and he told us very honestly that the duck fat fries were really just a lot of hype and that the waffle fries, sweet potato fries or onion rings were a better way to go. We had actually already been leaning toward one of those 3 options, but eventually we strayed from that section of the menu altogether and decided to share the jalapeno poppers as a side instead at our waiter’s very strong suggestion. Gabriel ordered a ‘Monkey Business’ milkshake: banana, peanut butter, chocolate ice cream, and a ‘Ultimelt burger’ (caramelized onions, bacon burger between 2 thin rye and grilled Gruyère sandwiches) and I ordered the sliders appetizer, choosing 2 BLT mini burgers (smoked bacon, lettuce, tomato, BLT burger sauce) and 1 Maytag blue cheese mini burger (maytag blue cheese, caramelized onions, mushrooms). Everything we ordered (which, by the way, came out SUPER fast) was fantastic. The milkshake was enormous, and was topped with a reese’s peanut butter cup and whipped cream- nice touch. The poppers were hot, crunchy and had the meltiest cream cheese center. The burgers were fresh, high-quality, and topped perfectly. Gabriel’s burger was cooked perfectly and so was one of my sliders, but I must say that the other two were kind of over-cooked and hence a bit dried out. The bacon on them was awesome though, thick cut, smokey and juicy, and it made up for the not-so-moist hamburger meat beneath it.

Our meal came out to about $45 total, and given the excellent, friendly and super speedy service and pretty damn good food, I think that was totally fair. The menu had a lot of other tasty options on it, and it might be worth a repeat at some point- but for now, it just makes me want to keep trying the other restaurants in this group. I think BLT Steak might have to be next…

 

*photos courtesy of Gabriel Sanders. http://www.magicsandbox.com/enter/Magic_Sandbox.html