Restaurant: The Counter
Location: 2901 Ocean Park Boulevard Santa Monica, CA 90405. (310) 399-8383
Date: August 25, 2012
Cuisine: Burgers
Rating: Food Coma!
For some reason LA has a love affair with the burger shack. It really does. We have tons of them, and at every economic level. The Counter is one of those middle/high end attacks on the genre, offering totally custom burgers. Not only do they have a lot of options on the bun but there are relatively updated takes on the traditional “accompaniments”: shakes and fries.
The inside is both modern and harkens back to the 50s.
These are some of the special menus. The full menu is here. It includes the exhaustive burger customization grid.
“Banana Split Shake. Vanilla ice cream with stawberries, banana & caramel, topped with chocolate syrup.”
“Caramel Java Malt Milkshake.” The shake was out of this world. True, it’s not really hard to make a great shake. The secret: good ice cream and lots of it, but this one rocked. I’m still feeling it four hours later.
“The fifty-fifty: sweet potato fries and crispy onion strings.” Fries were good too. These sweet potato ones in particular.
Chipoltle, BBQ, and ranch sauces. The later two were particularly excellent in combination with the fry.
“Kids grilled cheese.”
“2/3 pound beef burger with blue cheese, bacon, and chili on a pretzel bun.” I didn’t order right. The chili on the side thing didn’t totally work for me. And I should have gone for the nice looking caramelized onions and a more goopy cheese.
Overall, this was all very tasty, but I can feel my arteries clogging. I also like Umami’s funkier take on the whole burger concept, but The Counter was good too.