Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Burger Blast

2/21/14:



Stars: 4.5 out of 5.0
Pros: Lots of Restaurants, Lots of Breweries, Excellent Food
Cons: Super Crowded, Some Places Out of Food



     I have a deep affection for burgers. Something about patties of meat with toppings on a bun just gets me going. When my new boss offered to take me to Burger Blast, an all you can eat & drink event, I was an immediate yes. So, we all headed down to the Richmond Convention Center, got a tasting glass and walked into a room filled with greatness.

     Burger Blast (Burger Blast) is held the night before the VA Wine Expo. It is basically an event that brings in 15 different chefs/restaurants who will each create a slider-size burger with all sorts of different ingredients and toppings. You can eat as many as you want and are free to try all 15 locations. There was also over 25 VA craft beers and various VA wines for sampling. You could try all of those as well. It's pretty much heaven in a room.

     I will say right off the bat that this event draws a crowd. They sold out of tickets and the room was packed. There were lines and groups of people every way you turned. It made negotiating with full hands very difficult. It also meant that some burger lines were super long. It also meant you would start out in one beer line and randomly end up at another tap. I wasn't such a huge fan of the crowd.



     As soon as we got through the door, we got some beer. I started out with Lickinghole Creek's Magic Beaver. It was excellent. With a full beer in hand, it was time to focus on burgers. We jumped in the closest line, which turned out to be Mezzanine's line. They were serving up what was easily top 2 non-beef burger I tried. It was ground chicken & avocado with a red onion pineapple relish. The chunks of avocado mixed into the ground chicken gave it a fresh taste. The relish was citrusy and bright. It accented the earthy taste of the burger well. My boss went back for a second later in the night. I can't blame her.



     We started to make our way around the room. We stopped at the Brew booth. The burger was beef laced with pepperoni, onion & garlic. It was topped with mozzarella, goat cheese & marinara spread. It was very good. I'm a big fan of goat cheese so adding that is always a winner for me.



     We also grabbed a burger from Reynolds Community College. This group of culinary students put together bison & short ribs with a VA dark lager/bacon glaze on a house made bun topped with cherry tomato jam, smoked Muenster cheese, pickled red onion and watercress salad all finished off with a grainy mustard. This burger had a lot of things going on. It was richly flavored with all of the flavors blending nicely. I was very impressed because I thought it was going to be to busy. Kudos to the culinary students.



     Next up was Toast with the other of the top 2 non-beef burger I tried. It was a salmon burger topped with dill cream cheese, poached shallot and a Cabernet Franc wine reduction. First off... WHOA! This burger was a phenom. The salmon was fresh and fantastic. I love love LOVE dill and I think it's hard to have salmon sans dill. Add it with cream cheese and you have a luscious topping. The shallots added that light onion flavor while the wine added a little tang. I wanted to sit at the Toast booth and eat these salmon burgers till I died. Nicely done.



     In the midst of filling my glass and wandering around, I stumbled upon Carytown Burgers & Fries offering. It was a chopped sirloin burger with mushrooms, peppers, onions, lettuce, tomato, mayo, Italian dressing and provolone cheese. It was a basic burger in my book. And one thing Carytown Burgers & Fries can do is a basic burger. It was perfect. This is just one more reason they are one of Richmond's top 5 burgers in my book.

     In all I ate 9 sliders that night. That is roughly 3 lbs. of meat over the course of 2 hours. I wanted to hit all 15 places, but some ran out of burgers. Granted, they could only prepare so much food and bring so much product with them, but damn it!!! I wanted all of the burgers! Next year I guess I'll just have to get there earlier.



     Burger Blast is every carnivore booze-hounds dream. I know for a fact that I will be going back next year. It's worth every penny of admission. It's well laid out, well organized and I was well fed. High fives to everyone involved!


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