Some people who will remain anonymous have suggested to us that gastronome-about-town Mike Nagrant has a tendency to be un petite peu overcritical. We disagree: we find his no-punches-pulled first-person reviews to be a refreshing antidote to the weekly Stewart Smalley sessions dished up by Bruno and, increasingly, Vettel.
We assure you, in fact, that our esteem for Nagrant’s palate has little to nothing to do with the fact that he doesn’t like the burgers at newcomer The Counter, and that in an entirely unrelated turn of events we have previously gone on record about our skepticism of the quality attainable by a burger restaurant that cannot even count their topping combinations correctly. In fact, he sums up our fundamental problem with Counter’s menu much more succinctly than we did:
If I were writing my own burger manifesto, rule number one would be, “Burger joint menus should never make you feel like you’re taking a Cosmopolitan magazine ‘sexual experience’ quiz and leave you feeling inadequate.”
In his grand tour of newly-opened burger-centric Chicago dining, Nagrant also visits Epic Burger and Marc Burger (in the Macy’s food court). Of the three, Marc Burger comes out the surprise winner — “I might even say this particular burger was one of the best I’ve had in the city, though the patty was a little thin, making the ratio of beef to bun found in a Kuma’s Corner burger still supreme.” — but both Epic’s and Counter’s fall short of perfection.
Burger Battle [Hungry Magazine]
The Counter [MenuPages]
The Counter [Official Site]
Epic Burger [MenuPages]
Epic Burger [Official Site]
[Photo: The fries at Counter passed Nagrant’s muster. Via benyeh2’s Flickr]
