recap: 40-day dry aged, 13-dollar burger from David Burke's Primehouse

To date, the notable Chicago burgers I've had include:

Rosebud
Paradise Pup
The $19 Rockit Burger
Goose Island (Burger Bet 07)
Gaslight (Burger Bet 08)
Hop Haus
Five Guys
Milwood
Grand Lux (with short ribs)
Boston Blackies

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Today I ventured one block to Burke's Primehouse to try their 40-Day Dry Aged Prime Steak Burker (sic: a play on the owner's name) for twelve dollars. I ordered it medium and with cheddar ($1 extra) and passed on the fried egg on top ($4 extra). It comes with garlic spinach, crispy shallots, and bacon mayo, on a toasted potato bun with a side of asiago truffle fries. Got all that?

I've been in nice, expensive steakhouses before (Capital Grille, Gibson's) but this one carries an element of chefery, a foodie air about it. Before the food came an odd, crispy roll accompanied by a pat of butter with super-coarse brown salt sitting on top.

The menu didn't say how many ounces the burger was. It's not small by any means, it was a good size, but I think I was expecting a taller, rounder burger. Here's a good picture, not taken by me. Imagine this with cheddar between the burger and spinach:


It was definitely juice and definitely not overcooked. The center was absolutely RED, while the ring around it was a nice meaty pink before getting to a fully cooked age. There was too much spinach for my taste, so I scraped off a bunch and left a little.

About half-way through I remembered that this was a dry-aged burger. So I bit into again and again trying to discern the dry-aged flavor. I couldn't. Perhaps someone with a more refined palate could, but I couldn't. It tasted good, just not any different than my usual high-quality beef.

One thing that was surprising, was that if you're going to dry-age your beef for 40 days, why bother covering up with crispy shallots, bacon mayo and garlic spinach, and especially with the fried egg offer? Perhaps with just a hint of fine mayo, the agey-ness would have been more apparent.

As for the fries, I was really excited to try my second batch of truffle fries after my having Rockit's fries. I couldn't taste the truffle oil. The fries were good and the asiago--most of which was under the fries and required me to scoop it back on--was nice, but I would never have known these were truffle fries except for the label on the menu.

I liked going there, and thought the food I had tasted good, but sort of felt like I was promised more: dry-aged beef and truffle fries.

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So based on the burgers I've had in Chicago, here are my recommendations, not in a ranked order:

Rosebud (when you want a super steakhouse burger)
Rockit (when you want an exotic, wild burger and truffle fries)
Gaslight (when you want a classic merkt's, bacon and barbecue burger)
Paradise Pup (when you want that old school cheddar char-burger)