Month: September 2025

When is a smashburger not a smashburger?

In fairness, that’s a bit of a misleading question in the subhead. Popular Houston-based multi-location food truck Crypto Burger (with trucks parked in the Medical Center, Sugar Land, Spring, and Clear Lake) most certainly offers smashburgers. However, on my latest visit, their distinctive usage of spices — including the deployment of an unidentified herb sprinkled fairly liberally on the bun and in the burger sandwich itself — brought me to a flavor destination I don’t know that I’ve previously experienced within the realm of smashburgers.

Rewind to 17 months ago — I initially sampled Crypto Burger in February 2024 on the heels of irresistible social media hype, but came away somewhat disappointed. It could’ve been me — I ordered the Bull Run, enticed by the assortment of heat adjuncts laden within the composition, but the overall experience felt a bit lackluster.

The one component that did save the day that afternoon were Crypto’s ridiculous Spicy Metaverse Monster Fries, a gigantic platter that could easily serve as a meal unto its own that is absolutely smothered with ground beef, grilled jalapeños, and Crypto’s signature FOMO sauce. This might be my favorite loaded fries dish in the entire Houston burger game — and that’s saying something given the volume of local patty slingers that also feature comically overloaded and delicious french fried sides.

Clearly I wasn’t racing to get back, but with 2025 being the year where I finally and truly have fallen head-over-heels for the smashburger — again, I’ve never not liked smashes, but I always considered myself a traditional “regular”-sized patty aficionado. I of course still and always will adore a “normal” burger, but the number of outrageously great smashes I’ve sampled during the past year has dramatically increased my desire to consume them — the time was right for Crypto Take 2.

This time I knew I had to try the number-one seller on their menu: The Bunqua Burger, smashed-style. The Double Bunqua Smash comes with 100% Halal patties, jalapeños, fried onions, FOMO sauce, cayenne pepper hot sauce, and pepperjack cheese. (I also of course couldn’t resist another order of the Spicy Metaverse Monster Fries 🙌).

It ended up being the right call — as described above, the flavors in the Bunqua Smash came together in a way I’ve never quite experienced before, with a pleasant (but not overwhelming) amount of heat, solid char on the burgers, and that addition of the unnamed herb — I think it may have been thyme — syncing up nicely.

All in all, a nice bounceback for Crypto after my initial experience. Was it among the very best smashes I’ve had? I’d probably recommend a handful of places ahead of it. I can’t entirely put my finger on the why, but there’s something in the mix that’s keeping it from all-time memorable status — though that may be more of a me thing than a Crypto thing.

Still, I did give Crypto a shout in my Top 30 Hamburgers in Houston Power Rankings this past July, recognizing them as one of the “on the bubble” candidates in which I wrote:

“It’s been a minute since the one time I tried Crypto (a year and a half ago)and I really wanted to love it, but I remember the Bull Run Burger falling just a bit short of expectations for me. However, there was enough promise that I’ve recently returned it to my to-do list, and I think it’s worthy of bubble status. I have a feeling if I order the fan-favorite Bunqua Burger on my next visit, we could see this truck move on up in the rankings.”

I’d say the latter has a fairly reasonable chance of occurring. Bumping from the 4 I gave it in February 2024, to a 4.25 out of 5.0.

Revisiting my number-one burger in all of Houston for the first time since April

Longtime readers know burger-chan has been number-one in my heart for several years now.

Here’s a fun timeline of burger-chan (and Larry) history:

April 2016: Willet and Diane Feng officially open as Kuma Burgers in Greenway Plaza.

April 2017: The dynamic duo changes the restaurant’s name to burger-chan.

August 7, 2020: I get my first taste of burger-chan (delivered — I never actually visited the Greenway Plaza location).

August 28, 2020: Greenway Plaza location closes due to pandemic.

October 16, 2020: I enjoy burger-chan again; this time from its temporary delivery-only outpost at the Click Virtual Food Hall on Shepherd.

2021: I don’t recall ordering burger-chan much during this time period. Willet and Diane are hard at work planning and getting burger-chan 2.0 ready.

January 3, 2022: burger-chan 2.0 opens at its current above-ground home at 535 W. Alabama!

2022: burger-chan once again listed in the Houston Chronicle’s Top 100 Best Houston restaurants of 2022. burger-chan remained on the list for 2023 and 2024. Despite this I somehow go most — if not all — of 2022 without burger-chan in my life. To be fair, while I’ve loved hamburgers my entire adult life, I didn’t become obsessive and cataloguing and chronicling my consumption until…

Fall 2023: I remember that burger-chan rules and finally visit the Alabama St location. It is absolutely outstanding; instantly ascends to its perch as my #1 burger in all of Houston; and makes me question why on earth I went so long in between visits. While I tend to have great recall for this type of thing and/or documentation due to checking in to places / posting about my favorite spots, I believe this is my first time having burger-chan in at least two years. Blasphemy, I know.

December 2023: burger-chan tops my list of Best Burgers in Houston for 2023. Yelp rates burger-chan as one of the top 100 restaurants in the United States, ranking #47 out of 100. It also ranks #13 among the Top 100 places to eat in Texas.

October 2024: I enjoy burger-chan with much more consistency throughout 2024, and after getting to know Willet and Diane, they go the extra mile and release a limited-edition Bleu Cheese Burger at my request! The burger is exceptional of course, and to this day has yet to return.

December 2024: burger-chan once again tops my list of Best Burgers in Houston for 2024—a list that just keeps on growing. Yelp also again rates burger-chan as one of the top 100 restaurants in the United States, this time rising to #27.

April 2025: After nearly 10 years of incredibly hard work, Willet and Diane partner with chef Ryan Stewart and his Silver Linings Hospitality company to take over day-to-day operations of the restaurant. They of course remain involved, but not at the daily cadence they once were. Thankfully, quality-wise nothing skips a beat (other than getting to see their smiling faces upon walking in).

July 2025: I publish my first-ever Houston Hamburger Power Rankings, featuring the Top 30 hamburgers in the city. burger-chan retains its lofty perch at #1.

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And what did I order today? So glad you asked. I call it the Larry Classic: it’s the Spicy!!! Burger—which comes standard with pepperjack, charred jalapeños, pickled jalapeños, soy serrano peppers, and sambal mayo—on a sweet sourdough roll modified with three 2-oz patties, 1x Smoked Ghost Chili Pepper Flakes, fried egg over easy, bacon, sauteed mushrooms, lettuce, tomato, raw onion, pickles, mayo, mustard, and ketchup.

Utter saporous bliss.

Pincho’s revives a Bernie’s Burger Bus classic; while Boom Baam—located inside a gas station mini mart—underscores the Houston burger scene’s dedication to innovation

Sometimes your algorithm knows you better than you know yourself. I’m not sure I would’ve become aware of Boom Baam (13905 Westheimer Rd) had Instagram not started feeding me videos featuring the venue’s stacked-a-mile-high burger compositions. As a lover of piling everything-and-the-kitchen-sink on top of my beloved patties, Boom Baam ratcheted its way up to the top of my to-do list.

Located in a gas station mini-mart — this is now the third instance of such I’ve encountered this past year, along with Lone Star Market and Fresh & Furious — Boom Baam owner Chef Roberts is whipping up some of the tastier beef concoctions in Houston.

I ordered the “Build a Tower,” comprised of double beef, cheese, lettuce, pickles, grilled jalapeños, onions, and Boom Baam sauce, plus beef links, bacon, egg, and avocado. For the ridiculous number of hamburgers I’ve consumed in my life, I’m not sure I’ve ever had one topped with sausage, and I have to say—I dug the addition. The composition was expertly assembled (look at my photo!), and overall flavor terrific. Juicy and delicious, this is worth your while and an easy 4.5.

Next up: the Pincho burger chain—which, sad to say, severely underwhelmed me during my birthday burger weekend trifecta back in February—has a limited-time special collaboration available with none other than Justin Turner of the legendary Bernie’s Burger Bus.

For those unfamiliar, Bernie’s Burger Bus was an institution and one of the absolute best burger spots in all of Houston in the late 2010s. The family and I ate at the La Centerra location at what felt like a monthly cadence (it probably wasn’t, but we definitely made our share of visits), and it was beloved by all four of us. Much to the sheer horror of beef lovers citywide, closed all of its locations early on during the COVID-19 pandemic. Something else (that was clearly memorable 😂) briefly occupied the old Bernie’s space but it has largely sat vacant ever since, and to this day I am saddened whenever I pass by the old orange-hued storefront.

This was The Substitute burger at Bernie’s—a blue cheese bacon burger with what they called “tipsy” onions and burgundy mushrooms. This burger is truly GOATED, as the kids say (editor’s note: do they?), and if it were still around would easily occupy a slot in my top 5 of all time.

Unfortunately Pincho only brought one Bernie’s burger back: The Cheerleader (pictured above in daylight), comprised of a black angus patty topped with pepper jack, beer-battered jalapeños, slow-roasted garlic tomatoes, lettuce, and cilantro-jalapeño aioli. I modified it with a fried egg, applewood smoked bacon, pickles, and Texas-style double smash patties. Smashes weren’t really a thing—or at least, definitely weren’t what they are now—during Bernie’s’ heyday, so I thought it’d be fun to try ‘em on this Bernie’s re-creation.

The Pincho/Bernie’s Cheerleader was good! Substantially better than whatever I’d ordered at Pincho during my original disappointing experience. Was it Bernie’s good? Well, no, but it was satisfying enough in its own right and played all of the heart-tugging nostalgic notes that I’m glad it exists, and hopefully is successful enough for them to revisit additional items from Bernie’s’ back catalog. If a revival of The Substitute is announced at some point, that sound you’ll hear immediately after is me spontaneously combusting in excitement.

The third new burger to me I recently consumed was Stafford’s Tornado Burger. An old school burger joint to the hilt, I loved everything about its no-frills aesthetic (though talk about well off the beaten path, at least for this Katy resident). I ordered their triple spicy hamburger, and…it was fine. No major complaints, but nothing particularly memorable about it, either. My main takeaways were that I felt like the flavor was pretty subdued, and it definitely wasn’t notably spicy. Beef was fine; but overall this left something to be desired. Then again, at only a 4.0 on Yelp (4.5 on Google), this is one of those semi-rare occurrences where I agree with the wisdom of the crowd.

The rich get richer as yet another exceptional smashburger joint opens up in Houston, a.k.a. Hamburger City

2025 has been some kind of year for my endless pursuit of the finest hamburgers known to man. There were 12 new-to-me burgers on my recently published Top 30 Hamburgers in Houston list — many of which will make my annual year-end Best-of list, which in and of itself is getting crowded (here’s the 2024 wrap-up).

Proper. Gastrocraft. Boo’s Burgers. Wagyuru. Q’s Deli. Smashed Society. Lone Star Market. Narwhal Jousting Club. Moon Tower. Bad Buns.

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All enjoyed by me for the first time in 2025, and all uniformly outstanding — and somewhat absurdly, 50% of those names listed above opened in 2025.

It’s one thing for a city to enjoy one or two world-class additions to its hamburger scene in a given year. But five new spots, all boasting burger offerings rating between 4.5-5 out of 5, is wild, and further cements my contention that Houston is the Best Burger City in America, and by a wide margin at that.

With that, I suppose it should come as no surprise that the latest entrant to the scene — Smash City, which, like many of its smashburger brethren began life as a food truck — has come out of the chute on absolute fire.

Smash City delightfully hit my radar in ideal fashion: posts featuring the truck suddenly started appearing in my Instagram feed out of nowhere, touting the food truck’s upcoming new brick-and-mortar location, on Westheimer in Uptown/Galleria. It literally could not have been better situated for me.

In some regards the marketing plan was eerily reminiscent of Juicy Joint’s entry to the market, with multiple videos from both the company and local food influencers hyping the brand spawning seemingly overnight, which is clearly the playbook for getting in front of your desired audience. It got my attention and I subsequently decided to eat there less than two weeks after learning about its existence, so the plan appears to have worked.

But enough with the preamble. You’re here to know what I thought about the burger.

I ordered the Jalapeño Jackpot, which comes with two smashed Angus patties, melted American cheese, grilled jalapeños, smoky beef bacon, signature sauce, and grilled diced onions, on a very tasty (and sturdy) potato bun branded with their logo. Noting the heft of the bun is important, because I also added a third patty (of course), an egg, bacon, truffle mayo, mushrooms, lettuce, tomato and pickles, and oftentimes my custom burger towers overwhelm their foundation. I did find it slightly silly that the latter three fixings aren’t standard issue, but a minor quibble. I also enjoyed how I was lamenting that I seldom see mushrooms as a topping option after enjoying them on Lone Star’s Smash last week, and now here we are with our favorite fungi two visits in a row.

From the moment I sank my teeth into it to prevent the burger from toppling sideways — I recogize that I just lauded the bun, but trying to hold these overflowing beef towers up with one hand for the photo while sauces and hot juice are dripping down my hand is quite a bit more difficult than it looks — I knew I was in for something special.

I am well aware that Wagyu is all the rage (and rightly so), but these classic Angus patties sang all the savory beefy flavor notes I could want.

Sometimes my abundant topping selections can overwhelm the flavor of the beef, but everything was perfectly in sync here. Just delicious, well-prepared and thoughtfully cooked on the execution.

Those that have broken bread with me know I am the fastest eater around, so my consuming something quickly isn’t necessarily notable in and of itself — but I literally inhaled this thing, and given its generous proportions, that’s among the highest compliments I can pay a burger.

So there you have it — Smash City out of the gate with a no-doubt Top 15 and possibly/probably Too 10 smashburger in all of Houston. The rich get richer, indeed. 4.75 out of 5 patties.