On the search for the best burger in Connecticut brings us to Sycamore Drive-In in Bethel.
It is hard to describe this place. You pull up, and flash your headlights. Then, maybe someone comes out to you, maybe you go in and find someone. Then, you order your food and tell them what car you are in. Fairly quickly, they bring out your food and stick it on the side of your car window.
You could eat inside, but why?
The cheeseburger.
Okay, here’s the thing. When this shows up, it looks pathetic. The picture you see is not doctored in any way, the beef patty is insultingly thin. smashed (like Smashburger) doesn’t describe it. It’s more the idea of a beef patty. The impression of beef. There is more beef in an impossible burger.
Remember the Disney cartoon of Mickey, Donald, and Goofy in Jack and the beanstalk when they slice the food super thin?
That’s the beef patty.
The meat too, is flavorless. It tastes more like ambiguous griddle flavor than anything else.
And Yet.
and yet,
Somehow, when you bite into this burger, the whole bite is good. Good!
I can only conclude it is the juices from the meat, that when it gets thrown onto the patty get soaked up into the bun. That, with the standard white American cheese, somehow make something good, wholesome feeling.
As a meat patty, this is pathetic.
As a burger, this is good.
This burger shouldn’t taste as good as it does, but here we are.
The rating
7/10
The recommendation: Get the cheeseburger. Make it a double, ask if you can make it a quadruple. I’m not joking, the pattys are so thin you’d think we were in the depression. But somehow, it works.