Leslie and I heard that Richard Blais, one of our favorite finalists on a previous season of Top Chef (Richard was best known for doing molecular gastronomy-type (think Wylie Dufresne of WD-50 techniques/food) like sous-vide and utilizing liquid nitrogen etc etc etc) was opening a restaurant in B’ham, so we had to give it a try. It was wonderful.
Wonderful-wonderful.
It’s called
Flip Burger Boutique. The idea is a…well…it looks like someone in 1990 asked
Karim Rashid what the hamburger restaurant of the future would look like and he came up with this. In 2010, it looks perfectly current and a little trying-too-hard all at the same time. But in a really terrific, fun way. That’s the interior.
What they serve is the important part. And it is crazy good.
Well! This is what we tried:
The Southern burger (chicken fried beef patty, house-made pimento cheese, b&b pickles, sausage gravy):
and the Korean BBQ burger (American Waygu beef patty, braised short rib, kimchee ketchup, pickled veg, crispy tempura onion, Napa cabbage):
Seriously beyond delicious. Both of them.
We had tempura sweet potato fries with chocolate salt for a side (could only eat a couple of these but they were *so* good):
…and it’s hard to leave without a liquid nitrogen milkshake – in the back of the bar here, they are fixing a couple:
Milkshakes come in Smores, Krispy Kreme, Pumpkin Pie, Pistachio and White Truffle, and Foie Gras flavors. We got FG (on the left) and pistachio (on the right):
…but that was dessert and by that time we couldn’t eat more than a tiny bit. Good, though. Not *wow* good, but good. I think that something about the N2 made the pistachios weirdly soft which was…well, again, weird, and after our server mentioned the peanut butter flavor in the foie gras shake, guess what? It did taste like peanut butter, not foie.
Well, we are definitely going again for the hamburgers – these are some I’d love to try a bite of:
A5 (grade A5 imported Japanese Kobe, seared foie gras, caramelized onions, truffle oil, b&b pickles, red wine syrup) but that was $39 so…
Steak Tartare (hanger steak, garlic, chili, capers, worcestershire, pickled onion, frisee salad, smoked mayo, sous-vide egg yolk)
Wild Turkey (Benton’s bacon, smoked gouda, Wild Turkey glaze, smoked mayo, cranberry scallion relish, micro greens)
Oh! And instead of tea to drink, they had fun Cokes – I had a
Grape Nehi and Leslie had a
Cheerwine! Yum. Oh, and the silver was
Knork. Fun.
Can’t wait to go again!
—
Wow! Got a bunch of emails asking where Flip is (I should have posted it in the first place!). It’s at the Summit in B’ham, in the new section, just up from Cheesecake Factory.
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