When I go to eat a burger –– a real burger and not that trash you pick up at a take out window –– I go for the old school flavors. I want my burger with a single patty, bacon with a slice of cheddar cheese melting on top of it, lettuce and tomato. Sometimes I want onions, sometimes I don’t. I let the weather decide.
As for sauces, I leave it entirely up to how the burgers were intended. It’s in the sauces alone a burger has free reign over my palate. It’s the flavor of the sauce on a Red Mill Burger that drew me in and kept me fast, since every other great burger joint in town also does everything else right. In fact, these burgers make a unique statement in taste and style.
The sauce on a Red Mill burger, the Mill sauce, is a sort of creamy blend common to so many burgers, but it’s surely a proprietary blend. You won’t find a flavor like it anywhere else. It’s a little spicy, but not so much you need to chug down your soda to survive. The spicy flavor only adds to its intrigue. The sauce joins seamlessly with the hard meaty flavors of the meat, bacon and smoky cheddar to give it an overall punch that leaves you disappointed when the burger is gone. A burger is a burger, surely, but a Red Mill Burger is something more. It has to be experienced to be understood. It must be savored to be loved.
For the more adventurous, or confused, there is a whole menu of other kinds of burgers at Red Mill — a Verde Burger that comes with roasted peppers, a blue cheese and bacon burger, and other such innovations. The fries are decent but that’s not why you come here to eat.
If it’s fries you want, head to Zak’s in Ballard. Red Mill is for the burger purist, and if you’d like to have a strawberry shake with that, they’ll surely oblige you.
W: www.redmillburgers.com.
A #1: Phinney Ridge, 312 N 67th St., Seattle, 206.783.6362.
A #2: Interbay, 1613 W Dravus St., Seattle, 206.284.6363.