OK, you might start to see a recurring theme here. Once again, my beautiful wife Lori and I were exploring downtown McKinney for a place to eat. And once again, as in Italian food, burgers are not my normal modus operandi. But I must tell you that Square Burger in downtown McKinney is not your normal burger fare. We had not done any research or review-shopping on this location but if we had, there would have been no doubt about us visiting this establishment. I say this because unbeknownst to us, the head cook is the semi-famous Craig Brundege who has spread his talents in a number of top restaurants in San Francisco and Los Angeles including Spago. His sous-chef at this little burger shop that could is Ngoc Ngo who has also worked at a number of notable establishments including Wolgang Puck's steakhouse, Cut.
So again, we were walking around trying to decide where to donate our money and I decided to "settle" on Square Burger. We walked in around 1:00pm on a Saturday and it was fairly crowded. We gave the hostess our name and were told it would be about 25 to 35 minutes which I thought was a bit much but we decided to tough it out. The restaurant is not very large so many people give their cell numbers to the hostess and walk around a bit more. We opted to wait inside and peruse the menu.
Numerous beer specials are written on a huge chalkboard on one side of the restaurant as well as a few chef's specials which change daily. We ended up only waiting about 20 minutes or so before they seated us at a booth by the window.
Our extremely friendly waiter greeted us and after telling him this was our first visit, began to tell us about their appetizers and their prized grass-fed organic beef that is actually dry-aged. He had me at dry-aged...Forgoing the European style kiss on the waiter's cheek, we decided to order. I chose the Bleu Burger and Lori chose the Bacon and Smoked Cheddar BBQ Burger. I almost ordered the Lamb Burger which I heard another customer raving about, but it is always hard for me to sway from bleu cheese. Our waiter convinced us to get half an order of the Spicy Onion Strings and half an order of the Hand-Cut French Fries instead of one order of each because he said that would be way too much for us; a helpful tip that most waiters would not care to mention.
We waited patiently, OK maybe not patiently since we were both starving, until our food arrived. As some others have written about Square Burger, the food takes a little bit long when they are busy and they were extremely busy that day. But it was definitely worth the wait.
I ordered my burger medium rare and it was cooked to perfection. The Bleu Burger is topped with a caramelized onion marmalade, baby arugula, and homemade bleu cheese all sandwiched between a ciabatta roll. I literally moaned after my first bite and all subsequent bites. I was having a "When Harry Met Sally" moment and I was not too embarrassed to hide it. After that first awe-inspiring bite, I told Lori that this was the best burger I had ever had, hands down. The Spicy Onion Straws were also extremely good along with the Hand-Cut French Fries. Lori's burger was no run of the mill meat on a bun either. Hers was topped with Old Rasputin Imperial Stout BBQ Sauce, Apple Smoked Bacon, and 6 Year Aged Cheddar. When Lori "forced" me to take a bite, I was able to deduce that the BBQ Sauce was outstanding as was the combination of everything together.
As of this entry, we have not yet made it back to Square Burger but I can promise you our next visit will not be too far off.
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