Top Chef is one of my favorite shows and when I heard that
Evangelos "Spike"
Mendelsohn had opened up a casual burger joint I was pretty excited. After being open for about a year I finally got a chance to try out Good Stuff Eatery.
Burgers are one of the simplest foods to cook but very hard to get right. Every backyard griller can slap some ground beef formed into a patty and call it a day but how many can make a mouth-watering juicy burger that has you craving for more? The answer is not many.
Being a native of Arlington I've been a proponent of Five Guys for as long as I remember since they are a local establishment and since becoming a franchise they have been pretty good at keeping their traditional level of quality.
Before I get into my thoughts about the Good Stuff Eatery burger I'd like to go over the sauces which they have. When I first walked into Good Stuff I was a bit confused at all the people huddled around at what I thought at the time were ketchup pumps. It was actually a sight to be seen and I wished I had taken photographs of it. There was a large mass of people pumping sauces furiously into their little containers. When the area cleared a little I decided that I'd give the sauces a try. I casually walked up to the pumps and as I reached up to begin pumping a sauce a girl literally pushed my hand away and stuck her little container under the pump. I guess she realized what she did cause she apologized and asked me to get my sauced. I saw that she had already filled 15+ containers and said, "Wow they must have good sauces here. You should finish up since you're almost done," while pointing to her little pyramid of sauces. She blushed a little and replied with a quick "Yeah" but didn't
hesitate to finish filling 5+ containers before leaving.
So there are four "special" sauces at Good Stuff. The sauces are all a mayonnaise base with either chipotle, mango, Old Bay, or Sriracha mixed in. The sauces weren't bad and my favorites were mango and Sriracha. Chipotle really didn't work well with the mayonnaise. I felt like there were too many contrasting flavors and the flavors never came together. I have no qualms with Spike or the mayo but I do find it a bit amusing that people who are very enthusiastic about Good Stuff think what he has done is revolutionary. When I was in Good Stuff waiting for my food all I could hear the regulars talk about was how great and unique the mayo sauces are. You can find similar comments online on many other food critic blogs. I find this amusing because people have been using mayonnaise as a base condiment to create other sauces for a very long time. Japanese sushi chefs use a wide variety of mayo based sauces for rolls and the bases of thousand island dressing, hollandaise, and *gasp* even McDonald's special sauce is mayonnaise mixed with something else. So my advice to the food critics who are raving about his sauces, you shouldn't be a food critic if you don't even know that Japanese sushi chefs have been making similar sauces for years now let alone McDonalds. Now to the important stuff...the burgers!
The burgers pictured above from left to right are the Obama Burger, Uncles D's Chili 'N Cheddar, and the Farmhouse burger. I can only comment on the Obama burger since that it was I ate.
The Obama burger has bacon, blue cheese, onion marmalade, and horseradish mayo. It was a very good burger but you do not get the taste of all the ingredients. The blue cheese is the dominating flavor followed by sweetness of the onion marmalade. I was surprised that the flavor of the bacon got lost since bacon is a dominating flavor when used in most foods. I could not taste the horseradish mayo at all and would not have known it was in the burger if not told. What impressed me the most was the beef patty used. The quality of the ground beef used was excellent and you could really taste the beef. The patty was juicy and not over cooked but still had a great charred flavor. I hate to admit it but the patty at Great Stuff is much better than Five Guys. Like most burger joints though the buns were a bit soggy from grease. This made it difficult to eat the burger since the buns were small and began to fall apart as I was eating the burger.
Jason's Farmhouse burger is the classic burger with lettuce, tomatoes, and all the toppings you would normally find. He had the same opinion on the patty but the drawback to his burger was that you couldn't customize it. Five Guys has a long list of toppings which you can request when ordering. I understand that I had ordered a specialty burger so it doesn't make sense to ask me about my toppings preference. I strongly believe that a classic burger should come with the choice of ingredients which Good Stuff does not offer. You could probably ask for it but I find it odd that it's not standard when ordering.
As my side I ordered Spike's Village Fries which are topped with thyme, rosemary, and cracked pepper. They sounded great on the menu and I was eager to try them. When I opened my bag and dug through the fries I was met with charred herbs on the fries. The herbs are roasted before being placed on the fries and I guess they were over roasted this time. I would not recommend getting the fries with the herbs. The herbs were incredibly overpowering. You can't see it in the picture but herbs were dumped haphazardly into the fries and not mixed well throughout the fries. All you could taste was the over roasted thyme and rosemary which was not pleasant.
Good Stuff Eatery is a great place to take a date as it's a popular casual setting with great burgers. Although a bit pricier than Five Guys, Good Stuff Eatery offers a better atmosphere and serves as a good start for a night in DC. Does Good Stuff Eatery offer the best burger in the DC area? At the moment I'm still partial to Five Guys but they're pretty darn good.
Rundown:
Price: Low - Moderate
Service: N/A
Food: Good
Restaurant Decor/Setting: Casual
303 Pennsylvania Ave S.E.
Washington, D.C. 20003
202 543-8222
