June 01, 2010
The Burger Stop 漢堡站
There has been an absolute explosion of high-end burger places in Taipei recently. I can probably name a dozen off the top of my head just within the eastern part of Taipei (if I cheat a little bit and count Posh I, II, and III as three). Heck, there's one almost directly downstairs from our place, which hasn't been good for my waistline at all.
Into this egg-tart like frenzy comes The Burger Stop. Located behind the main Zhongxiao boulevard in a nondescript alley, it's sited amongst many restaurants of various cuisines near but not quite at the heart of the 東區 action. Walking into the shop certainly brings a good first impression. Other local burger places tend to go with the spare Ikea-modern look, or seem more like coffee-houses than burger-shacks. The Burger Stop goes for the retro-diner look and nails it: brightly lit, red-and-black colored racing theme (complete with real racing slicks piled in a corner), with some white-tile accents. Clean, air-conditioned, free wi-fi, and free soda refills too, perfect for eating in, although swiping on an iPhone screen with greasy fingers isn't such a great idea.
That's all well and good, but there's plenty of handsome-looking restaurants in Taipei serving up mediocre food and worse. Thankfully that's not the case here. The American owner is in the store patiently teaching the crisply-uniformed staff about properly cooking the burger patties, how to run the shake-blender for the hand-made ice-cream shake, and demonstrating how to batter-and-fry the onion rings. Wait, did you say onion rings? Yes please! An inexpensive upgrade to the burgers-and-fries combo, the thin onion rings are thinly but thoroughly coated in crisp batter. Not heavy and soggy with breading, but crispy and locking in the sweetness of the onion. Made with real onions dipped and fried as I watched, not the perfectly circular Stepford-onion-rings out of a frozen bag.
And the burger itself wasn't bad, either. The most In-n-Out-like burger I've had in Taiwan, but better! Perfectly sized with crisp slices of iceberg lettuce and tomato on top of the fresh-beef patty and custom-baked buns. Cheese is melted on top of the burger with a layer of secret sauce (i.e. Thousand Island dressing). The neat-and-tidy fast-food-style burger is differentiated from the other places serving restaurant-style huge-and-sloppy burgers, although the subtleties of the burger-art may be lost with the eating public here.
It's a testament to the rapid evolution of the Taipei restaurant scene that such a burger place would've been manna from heaven when I first arrived a few years ago, is now just one-amongst-many excellent American burger options within walking distance. The downside of the Taipei restaurant scene is that the craze-bubble inevitably pops, but I hope The Burger Stop hangs in there and survive the competition fallout. If only for those onion rings!
The Burger Stop
台北市大安區延吉街137巷26號
(02) 2711-7079