FoodNerd!

boston burger wars

We got a hot tip from a pal that someone at the Boston Globe had gone so far as to say that a new Cambridge burger place had the closest thing to In-N-Out on the east coast. Obviously we were going to check THIS sort of thing out in detail.

The place in question is Flat Patties, a spot in the Harvard Square Garage that appears to be run by the same people who run Felipe's Taqueria, which I've heard good things about but never yet tried. The folks behind the counter are friendly, and the burger is good, but in our highly unofficial head-to-head competition with Four Burgers in Central Square, they went down hard.

No contest. That Four Burgers burger is pretty damn close to In-N-Out, actually, and has tons of burger flavor. I didn't even put ketchup on, and I ketchup the hell out of burgers as a general rule. I have no idea what J. Kenji Alt was smoking that day, when he called it flat and flavorless.

In fact, that was the main gripe I had with the otherwise perfectly nice Flat Patties burger: it lacked flavor, even with Swiss and avocado and "special sauce". I ketchuped the thing, then put on relish.

Given that Four Burgers also had better fries, Coke Zero in the fountain, AND sources their meat from crunchy granola safe-meat farms, it's a no brainer for me: the superior burger can be had at Four Burgers. If you're in Harvard Square, by all means have a Flat Patties, but for the closest thing to In-N-Out, you gotta go one more stop inbound on that Red Line.

Posted by foodnerd at May 3, 2009 01:00 PM