A Side of Fries with Hat Creek Burger Company

With so many good burger places in north Austin I don't see any point in visiting Hat Creek again. The burger was mediocre. Besides the fun sign outside, you lose all character inside. It looks like a fast food restaurant.... it feels like fast food. 

Hat Creek Burger Company (5400 Burnet Road) might be easy to spot with the old Arby's sign out front, but you might as well just keep going.  With full intentions of putting Hat Creek on the 7 Best Burgers of Central Texas tour after recommendations I should try it out, I must say I agree with the Yelp review above.

The employees are very nice and attended to my order in a very courteous fashion, but I just couldn't help but think Hat Creek's burger is just plain and simple.  There's nothing wrong with a plain and simple burger.  Not all of them have the frills and added elements of a gourmet burger.  But there's just nothing special about Hat Creek.  The patty tasted ordinary, and I did not see how they cooked it.  The fries were also the very skinny shoestring style, which I am not a fan of.  

To be fair, many Yelp reviewers do like Hat Creek and it's only right to include one of them here.

The burger was really good, I'd say good enough to go back.  And I really like their fries - on the thin side, crispy, some skin on them.

Another complaint I saw on Yelp that I sort of noticed myself but didn't place a thought to it at the time is the very white, sterile dining room.  There's a huge wall that separates the dining room from the ordering area, which seems to be very divisive so customers can't see everything going on at the front.  I would enjoy it more if the entire space were open.

I can't in good faith include Hat Creek on the 7 Best Burgers of Central Texas tour because in my opinion, it just wasn't.  I am glad I got to try their hamburger, but I don't feel that I'll be going back.  But as I always say, try it out for yourself to decide.  You can find Hat Creek on the web here, and make sure to check out the video of the place on the Hat Creek media page.  It's actually pretty good.

Under new Federal Trade Commission guidelines, which require bloggers to disclose information regarding potential conflicts for items reviewed in their blogs, the Austin Citysphere was not compensated for this story.