The Counter Hamburger Shop – Irvine

With a few new shopping centers cropping up in our area we decided to get out and start trying a few of them. The first one we hit up is The Counter in the new Woodbury Shopping Center (Sand Canyon and Irvine Blvd in Irvine). The Counter is a cool little burger shop featuring totally custom burgers. From their website “Step into The Counter® and you’re greeted with a clipboard and an extensive list of mouth-watering ingredients that allow you to build your own gourmet burger. Our 312,120+ different burger combinations make every burger as unique as each customer. Rarely is the same burger made twice in one day.” Continue reading for detailed review.

When you get seated at your table you are given a clipboard with all of the available choices. You start with a protein and a size, your choices are Beef, Turkey, Veggie, and Grilled Chicker  at 1/3 pound, 2/3 pound, or 1 pound sizes. You then have 10 choices of cheeses, 18 toppings, 9 premium toppings, 17 sauces, and three choices of buns. There is also a good selection of starters, signature burgers, sandwiches, kids meals, and desserts.

Our Meals
My wife and I each went with 1/3 pound burgers each with a different selection of toppings and sauces and we split a 50/50 (half order of fries, half order of onion strings). The service was prompt and courteous and the food….well….simply put, it was terrific. The meat was cooked perfectly, seasoned well, the breads and toppings were nice and fresh and the fries were really good. The onion strings tasted terrific but were a little greasy. As much as we liked the food, my wife had a couple of complaints. First off, the 1/3 pound patty was larger than she would have liked, she actually couldn’t finish the whole thing. Secondly, the cheese was cut so thin that it almost wasn’t there, so ordering double-cheese is certainly called for if you are into your cheese.

Summary
We will certainly be going back and trying some other combinations and checking out some other starters. We have also heard good things about their milkshakes. As of this writing, their milkshake of the month is a vanilla ice cream shake mixed with white birthday cake and topped with sprinkles and whipped cream.

Website: http://www.thecounterburger.com