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One Good Dish: Burger Bar's Gyro Burger

By Chuck Sudo in Food on Dec 19, 2011 7:30PM

I wasn't wowed by Burger Bar. (Although John DiGilio had a lot of nice things to say about their veggie burger.) But a friend of mine recommended I reconsider my opinion by sampling Burger Bar's gyro burger.

John McLean and company still haven't worked out the kinks to some parts of the menu; Burger Bar's sweet potato fries, for instance, were lukewarm and limper than the Bears' fourth quarter effort yesterday. But my friend was on to something about the gyro burger's mix of ground beef and lamb, topped with a slaw of tomatoes, onions and pickles, feta cheese and tzatziki sauce.

Yes, tomatoes are out of season but if you're going to call something a gyro burger you can't do much better in December than the cherry tomatoes topping this burger, which has a nice savory flavor to balance the sweetness of red onions, the sharp bite of feta cheese and the tangy of tzatziki. Cooked to medium, the gyro burger had a nice char to it not unlike some of Chicago's best spindle meat palaces.

Of the half-dozen or so burgers I've eaten at Burger Bar, this was the first one I was able to thoroughly enjoy. Next time I find myself at Burger Bar I'll have to substitute the sweet potato fries for regular.