Restaurant Name: Press St. Station Neighborhood: Bywater Ambiance: Marigny Industrial Name of Burger Ordered: The Burger Price of Burger(s): $12 (includes fries) Size of Burger: 8 oz (2 - 4 oz patties) Temperature: Medium-Rare Press Street Station is a product of the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts Institute (NOCCA). NOCCA is Louisiana’s tuition-free conservatory where high school students are trained in arts such as music, theater, dance, and culinary arts. Profits from Press Street Station go to support the students and NOCCA's programming. Awesome!
NOCCA’s list of notable alums is extensive. Harry Connick Jr! The Marsalis brothers! Jon Batiste! Anthony Mackie! Wendell Pierce! Double awesome! Of the 17 alums Wikipedia lists, none are in culinary arts, which may be telling in the quality of the Press Street Station burger. The burger is good, but not what Harry Connick Jr. is to crooning, good. Maybe John Besh or Susan Spicer will send their kids there and their progeny will be an incredible student chef and put a top notch burger on the menu. In the meantime, come for the Sunday Jazz Brunch, which features a roaming jazz trio of Connick, Wynton Marsalis, and Trombone Shorty! Ok, sorry. That last sentence isn't true. But Press Street should definitely do a hidden camera show with this as the premise some day. We'd watch it! The Burger: 6.97 Bun: 8.5 The bun was sweet, both literally and metaphorically, and definitely the best part of the burger. It was a brioche sweet potato bun, with a flaky texture reminiscent of a Parisian croissant. It’s equally delectable as part of the burger or on its own, which is a challenging achievement for a sweet bun (see: Tulane Diner burger). As of this posting it’s the 3rd highest rated bun on our list, placing it miles ahead of the Mondo bun (maybe they don’t need Susan Spicer’s kid after all!). Patty: 6.0 The patty reviews were unanimous -- every rater gave it a 6, noting that it was unseasoned and overcooked. The Burger includes 2 - 4 oz patties (which is different than the outdated pics on Yelp which show a single fat patty, so beware!). Using two small patties instead of one big patty ratchets up the difficulty (it's harder to get the temperature right and keep the juices in). It make sense to do this if you’re offering customers a variety of burger options of different sizes (i.e. single patty, double patty, triple patty), but if you only have one burger on the menu it adds an unnecessary layer of difficulty. Our advice — stick with one big patty! Bun to Meat Ratio: 5.0 Scroll down and take a look at the pictures. Go ahead, we’ll wait. Can you even SEE the patty in there? Shrink us down and we feel like we could walk on the bun around the patty like a kid playing in the Hamburglar cage on the old McDonald’s playgrounds. Basically this picture. Which is ACTUALLY one of our raters chilling inside all of the extra space in the Press Street Station burger. But seriously, what is with the trend of these burger joints making the burger taller than it is wide! Go ahead. Scroll down to the pictures again. We don’t want to have to worry about our burger tumbling over like it’s the cake from Sleeping Beauty, when the good fairies were trying to cook without magic! Standard Toppings: 7.8 The veggies (tomato, arugula, and pickles) are grown in Press Street Gardens, NOCCA’s urban farm that is just steps away from the restaurant. If we know anything about millennials, this alone (farm-to-table anyone?!) should get them in the door. And for good reason. These beauties were some of the freshest veggie toppings we’ve had and were bursting with flavor and color. The Burger also comes topped with heaps of cheddar cheese. Cheddar cheese is awesome, and is the best cheese when you’re George Costanza entering a bachelorhood paradise and want to consume an entire block. But on burgers (including this one) it can just get lost. If we’re going to have to run an extra 30 minutes on the treadmill because we opted for cheese on our burger, the taste needs to be worth every added calorie! Sides: 7.8 Fries were very good, freshly cut, and well-seasoned. Taste: 7.0 This is a burger that will race straight to the middle of our rankings. The bun and toppings were above average, while the patty and bun-to-meat were below average. In this case, the good wasn’t enough to outweigh the bad, which always leads to a middle-of-the-road burger. Accuracy: 5.0 This is the lowest accuracy score we’ve dished out, and if you check out how we score this category it’s actually incredibly tough to earn a five in this category unless you bring us the wrong item. In this case they brought us the right thing, it was just wayyyy overcooked. Everyone ordered a medium-rare burg and they ALL came out medium-well. There are rare (no pun intended) occasions where this doesn’t hurt the burger (see: Mint Modern) but in this case we think a medium-rare burger would have made a big difference. Value: 7.0 Your $12 gets you a burger and fries, which = a lot of food. Your money is also going to a great cause, so as a bonus you get that warm and fuzzy feeling even while spending a little more than you'd like for an average burger. Service: 8.3 The staff was friendly, attentive, and patient in answering our plethora of questions. We were basically the only people there (we came right as they opened for the evening), and service was a little slow considering, but maybe they wanted to keep us there to build some social proof. Returnability: 6.0 As always, we don’t include atmosphere in this score, but it’s a VERY cool space that would be great for an event or just plain ol' cocktails after work. We gave the burger an average returnability score, but we think it’s worth a second shot to see if they can get the temperature right and potentially kick this burger up a notch. Want to see how Press Street ranks? Check out the Burger Meet rankings.
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December 2017
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