You know, there's a shocking amount of study around the concept of "habits". Scholars have debated for decades what drives our need as humans to form habits, and guru's have spent that time positing methods for breaking undesirable habits. Medical literature is likewise rife with the biological components of habit-formation, be it studies of the behaviors themselves, the frequencies and repetitions needed to define them, or the bio-chemical processes and drugs that form them. In the end there's a lot to digest (yes pun intended, of course it is) regarding the subject of habits, though I will admit I don't believe anyone has done a rigorous study on the clothing side of the term. I'm pointing all of this out to say that there is, by this point, quite a lot of specificity surrounding the term "habit".
And Joe, these burgers just ain't it. I ate one. It tasted good. But I remain non-habituated to it. It's not laced with anything particularly addicting, is what we're getting at, and I feel like that's genuinely false advertising.
My area is going through something of a Califorenaissance lately, between burger chains like The Habit Burger Grill (that's some culinary word salad right there) and In-N-Out opening up in town. That's also been accompanied by a bizarre influx of actual Californians moving to the area, which has played havoc on the housing market and screwed with local inflation such that we just don't track to national averages anymore, but I digress. The salient point today is that within weeks of each other we went from zero So-Cal burger chains to 2, and while maybe that doesn't seem like a lot, it's weird that it happened twice.
Now In-N-Out burger is a bit more of a staple throughout the western US than Habit Burger is, and I've been eating there for years. I genuinely didn't know what to expect from their Irvine competition, however, so this past week I went through their drive-thru to see what all the fuss was about.
And let's start by talking about their drive-thru, in fact. It follows a very modern trend to wrap the entire line of cars around the outside of the parking lot, I suspect ostensibly to maximize the length of the line within the bounds of the actual property. A somewhat unnerving trend for this sort of line, however, is to physically separate it from the parking lot via a curb and possibly some planters of some sort. That was the case here, meaning that if you pull in, you're committed. It's not entirely unlike a trap, at that point, and having entered the line of this much-hyped new restaurant, I realized very quickly that I might have made a mistake. Even worse, the drive thru for Chick-fil-a was right next door, and while I waited 30 minutes for my food, I'd estimate no fewer than 30 cars entered that (far more efficient) line and received their food. But thankfully the weather was nice. I turned on some music, rolled down my windows, and aided by the haze of local wildfire smoke I put myself into the mind of a Californian.
And then I ordered a standard Charburger (which is like a hamburger, but charred) and a side of tempura green beans (which are like green beans, but good).
Overall I'd rate the experience with Habit Burger's food as excellent. They put a lot of stock into the fact that they cook their beef over an open gas flame, like you would on your propane grill at home, rather than a flat-topped griddle, like you would at home if all you had was a George Foreman. As a direct result of that the scent of grilling meat wafting out of that place was absolutely heavenly, and the flavor matched. If you've never done a direct comparison before let me outline a simple experiment you can do at home to illustrate why this matters. Take two fresh hamburger patties, season them identically, then cook one on your propane or charcoal grill and the other in a frying pan on your stove top.
There's truth to the adage that a burger cooked over an open flame does taste better, everything else being equal. High heat results in a charred outer shell and a still juicy interior, and before you even think about bringing up char-broiling the actual flame is a major component here. Char-broiling gives you an outer shell that simply doesn't taste significantly different than the rest of the burger. Cooking it over an open heat source will lend it a specific flavor based on the vapors that result from the relevant combustion. Propane will taste subtly different than charcoal, for instance. I suspect that Habit Burger is cooking over natural gas, but in either case you can taste the carbonization of that flame, and it does elevate the patty closer to something I might cook at home.
The rest of the burger components were good as well. Better than average lettuce and tomato with a solid bun and reasonably tasty pickles and cheese. It was a good burger all around, with my only complaints being that they didn't really buck the fast-food trend of serving me a patty that's simply not very thick, meaning it wasn't as juicy as it could have been, and that despite tasting quite good that burger was not worth waiting a half-hour for.
The green beans, on the other hand... Those might have been.
Look, green beans (string beans, or whatever) can be a pretty divisive legume. I know people that hate them. I know people that eat them like crackers. Personally I'm ambivalent. I'll eat them, but I don't seek them out. Turns out all you really need to do to change that for me is to bread them and fry them and serve them with a good quality ranch dipping sauce. The side of green beans was the surprise star of this show, bursting onto stage like a reincarnated Freddy Mercury randomly walking in on a Queen tribute band's concert. I was confused to see it on the menu, then I was suddenly delighted it was there, and now after the fact I'm still just as confused that it was on the menu.
But I'm sure as heck not going to complain about it.
Did the green beans alone make the wait worth it? Well, combined with the quality burger, the fact that I wasn't in a hurry to get anywhere, and the general pleasantness of the weather while I waited (which is not a given this fall, lemmetellyuuuu-what), I would actually say yes. I was pleased with my first experience at Habit Burger.
As I teased at the beginning it certainly hasn't triggered any major synaptic rewrites in my brain, and I have experienced exactly zero cravings for the place since I went. But it was good, and I'll probably go back eventually. Just... maybe not till the hype has died down a bit.
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