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Well-Built, Red-Blooded Beefcake

Eat it, Chicago!

Butcher & The Burger serves the manliest meat in town.

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How many BYOB burger shops are there in Chicago? A handful, if you exclude places that happen to serve burgers, and focus instead on restaurants specializing in them. Do you like to choose a beer on a whim and having it served to you in a glass? I like the money I save by snatching my own hooch. My own beers and some freshly ground, grass-fed, manly-ass beef: perfect.

Two-fisted David Tamarkin suggests that you consider your Butcher & The Burger choices carefully. I’d like to elaborate. If you know enough math to calculate the permutations, you’ll find that B&TB offers you many thousands of possible combinations of burgers, spices, buns, and toppings. You can bet that B&TB has some good ideas about what the better combos might be. If that’s how you feel, check out the “favorites” board.

What I Had

• Natural & Local House Blend Beef with Chicago Steakhouse spice blend on a Split Top Butter Egg bun with American Cheese, Lettuce, Bread & Butter Pickles, Yellow Mustard, Mayo, and Ketchup – $9.35. Medium-rare. As you can see, I built a straightforward burger, making conservative, classic, heroic choices that reflect the traditional values of middle America. As you can also see, I paid almost $10 for a single burger. Question is, was it $10 good? It was a lot of burger. If aversion to excess were something our culture cultivated, it might’ve fed two. It was buttery beef, beautifully cooked, surrounded by top-notch, local, sustainable, made-in-house ingredients. I was lavishly satisfied. What else costs $10? One minute and thirty seconds on a sex chat line. Two hands of blackjack in Vegas. Less than 2½ gallons of gas in Chicago. A Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese Meal, plus a McFlurry.

• Hand-Cut Kennebec Fries – Lg. $5.50. These are the type that taste boldly like a potato, and not merely like a “fry.” Exceedingly good.
• Homemade Potato Chips – $1.50. I found them to be too greasy. Could’ve been my mood. Actually … I threw them out – and I’m the kind of guy who saves leftover Burger King fries so he can add them to an omelet the next day. Sorry, B&TB.
• Filbert’s Root Beer – $3.00. A local brew with a four-generation, south-side history. Refreshing.

Summing It Up:

If you’re a meat-loving man, wandering the streets with a six-pack of local craft brew – but they’re not screw tops – and you think that talking about sex on the phone is boring, you should go to Butcher & The Burger. They have a bottle opener.

Butcher and The Burger

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 Butcher & The Burger is at 1021 W Armitage Ave, in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood.

The following is a public service announcement from Make It Like a Man! When carrying your alcohol to Butcher & The Burger – or any other BYOB – be sure to exercise discipline in leaving it unopened until you arrive at the restaurant. Carrying open alcohol in public is illegal in Chicago (except on Navy Pier, because we can’t expect out-of-towners to carry our burden). But if you can’t walk around with an open beer, you can walk around with a loaded weapon. That’s because our feckless leaders believe it would be more terrifying to walk down the street and encounter a guy drinking a beer, than a guy with a pistol.

 Credits for all images on this page: Make It Like a Man. Hover over image and/or green text to reveal secrets. Click for more.

 For further reading, check out this review by one of my fellow Zomato bloggers.

This content was not solicited, nor written in exchange for anything.

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