Day 10 - Burger's Up: Mary's Notes

Our intention this day was to visit another of Nashville's traditional burger dives, but the hours listed on the web were wrong and we needed something that was open already at 10:30. So we drove from the Nolensville Road area to Melrose and our second choice wasn't open yet, either. Went four streets over and Burger Up, the new venture from the owner of the Frothy Monkey, was unlocked and ready for business, or at least it was ready to serve a margarita. Here's how it went:

Juiciness - 6. Most of the 1/2 teaspoon or so of drippage was in the form of grease more than juice.

Flavor - 10. There it is, finally, a 10 from me. Local, grass-fed beef flavor wins out. Burger Up's basic cheeseburger adds caché name-brands Jack Daniels for ketchup, Cabot's for cheese and über-hip (for Tennessee foodies, anyway) Benton's bacon; I'm pretty sure the burger would have tasted just fine without them.

Attractiveness - 7. It was a lovely burger. It was ordered medium rare and appeared to have the texture of a medium-rare but the meat was suspiciously grey, not pink.

Atmosphere - 9. Very 12 South; matted steel with some vintage wood thrown in and public-house style seating.

Digestivity - 5. Getting some pangs. I'm not sure if it was from the beef, grease from the bacon or the French fries, which, by the way, were seasoned with truffle shavings. Major points on the foodie scale, for both of the latter.

All photos ©Mary Brace 2013. All rights reserved

Overall experience - 8. In spite of finally finding a burger with flavor that beat out Dalt's (which will make all of my hipster friends very happy with me) the overall experience was brought down by two things: the above-mentioned pangs and the less-than-stellar margarita.  Burger Up's margarita seemed to venture too much into screw-driver territory. The $11 price tag on the burger can be justified by the gourmet burger craze, the $10 inferior cocktail, not so much.

afternote: this review was written in June but circumstances prevented posting it. On a return trip the burger was just as good, and no pangs. I don't get the margarita anymore, and it's a 10 every time.

update Dec. 2011. After Burger Up! we pretty much stopped rating Nashville burgers because nothing else we'd had up to that point could touch Miranda Pontes's burger in quality. Still, the Nashville burger universe is ever-expanding and if a great one is found, I'll write about it in the future.