Smokejacks: Home to the Nation's Top 10 Burger

Burlington's Smokejack's restuarant has a headline-making hamburger, but can it live up to the hype?

Story and photos by Sally Hale

In May of 2004, USA Today listed, in the spirit of National Hamburger Month, the top 10 burger destinations in the nation. Under the headline “Places to eat a burger worthy of paradise,” the beefy and heavenly few included such eateries as Corner Bistro in New York City, Dark Horse Bar and Grill in Boulder, Teddy’s Bigger Burgers in Honolulu – and Burlington, Vermont’s Smokejacks Restaurant. The headline-making burger ranked in at number three with the delectable sounding - and impossibly long named - LaPlatte River Farm Black Angus Burger on Toasted Focaccia with Cabot Cheddar. A life-long hamburger connoisseur with a weakness for all things cheddar, I had read no further than “toasted focaccia” when my mind was made up: I would hop a ferry to Burlington to try this paradise-worthy burger for myself.

Smokejacks’s interior is an eclectic mix of country kitchen meets modern city cafe – with a twist. Simple honey-colored pine tables, sitting in uniform rows, are outfitted with tin salt and pepper shakers, with a single yellow daisy sitting in a translucent glass vase at each table; the waitress pours streams of ice water from an antique-looking pitcher. Looking up, however, reveals contemporary electric-blue pendant lights suspended from fine wires. Upon closer inspection, the tray ceiling is made up entirely of silver-colored tin, with the restaurant looking less like a North Country destination and  more like a contemporary city loft. The winsome brown eyes of a beagle peer out from a simple black frame, which hangs side by side with other oversized paintings of pooches in bold blues, greens, reds and oranges, with the portraits providing a dash of Art Deco against a stark white wall.

After placing my order of one Big Bold Burger, the wait consists of roughly 30 finger-drumming minutes. I sit. I talk. I yearn. But then, sitting on a midnight blue plate, nestled against bacon-roasted organic potatoes, the famed burger, at last, arrives. However, it is no ordinary hamburger: this is, quite simply, gourmet. The hamburger - if it can be called by such an ordinary moniker – is outfitted with, not a light-weight bun, but thick, foccacia bread, which appears to have been toasted on one side and brushed with a hint of rosemary and olive oil. The roughly one-inch thick Angus beef patty is covered with an oozing, melted layer of organic jack cheese. An artful dollop of shredded red onion, faded to pink after being cooked in vinegar, gives the burger a surprising sweetness; upon taking my first bite, the mix of sensations – the juicy burger, the just-right sharp cheese, the tangy onion – provides an explosion of tastes, all mixing to create what is, without a doubt, the best burger I have ever had. (And although the 30 minute wait was, according to the waitress, due to the fact that I had ordered the burger well done, the meat is most definitely not charred, nor tough or juiceless.)

At $13 for both the burger and the tuna, the meal came to a reasonably priced $26. And the price is well worth it to sample a plate from paradise.

Have you ever visited Smokejack's?