A month is really not enough time to tell if a restaurant is going to survive, or if its cuisine is worthy of exaltation. That being said, Bill St. Bar and Grill in Little Rock just might have the best burger in the city. That's a heck of a thing to say, I know. But the burger seems to be something extraordinary.
Upon the recommendations of a couple of people who had urgently emailed and Tweeted me about finding joy on a bun at Bill St., I visited the restaurant for lunch on a perfectly seasonable spring day. Bill St. opened next door to the Clinton Library Store on President Clinton Avenue just down from the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock. I suppose there's no mistaking how the place got its name.
The restaurant is below street level, with a descending wooden staircase down onto the patio. There is an elevator upstairs in the banquet room area. The rejuvenated building has been scraped down to its structural timbers, with quietly blue walls and nicely spaced tables throughout. There's a bar at the patio end and a few TV monitors, along with a few painted rendition of famous rock photographs of Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon. Downtempo music fills the space.
The menu seems more upscale than it has to be for a burger bar. Appetizers include Portobello “Fries” with Ranch dressing and Sausage Balls with Dijon-mayonnaise. There's also an Arkansas classic, Pimento Cheese with Celery. I got a kick out of the list of wing flavors, especially Russian Roulette in which one of the wings is injected with habanero juice. There are four salads and five sandwiches on the menu, and even Fish and Chips. But I was on a burger quest.
Which burger do you go with? Bill St. offers 11 kinds, including a Veggie Burger and a Salmon Burger (which the menu warns may include bones). The other nine include the Argentina (with fried egg and salsa), the Taco (with taco seasoning and guacamole), the Napalm (with fried jalapeno peppers, Habanero purée, Pepper Jack cheese, and grilled pineapple), the Aloha (with teriyaki grilled pineapple, ham, and Swiss cheese), the Steakhouse (mushroom, Swiss, caramelized onion, and bacon), the Black and Blue (with bleu cheese, an onion ring, steak sauce, and bacon) and the Peanut Butter and Bacon. All of these seemed interesting, but to get to the real truth of whether this could be the best burger in town I had to go with the Bill Burger or the Double Bill.
I ended up choosing the simple half-pound Bill Burger because frankly, I can't eat a pound of burger meat in one sitting; it'd have been a waste. The Bill Burger comes with cheddar cheese and bacon, and like all of the other burgers there it comes cooked to order, with medium as a default. I asked for medium rare, and I got it. It took about 10 minutes for my order to come out.
The burger comes with a mess of hot fries and a pile of veggies on the side (along with optional condiments). My veggie pile included a big newspaper-like, eight inch-long flat of Romaine, a single slice of tomato, a couple of thin slices of red onion, and a couple of chunky bread and butter pickles. The burger is served up on a very lightly toasted sesame seed bun whose seeds go everywhere. It has a pick for a reason—it'll slide all over the place depending on whether and what vegetation you add to it. It's juicy. And dang, it's good.
The bacon isn't crispy-crunchy—it's cooked through okay. The cheddar cheese is more than adequate. Quite honestly, you could dispense with both and be perfectly happy. The good stuff is the spice in the patty, that fantastic combination of black pepper and some amazing special seasoning. It matches well to the fries and even better with the bread and butter pickles. I could've used about four times as many pickles, but that's me being crazy about bread and butter pickles there, Maynard
The fries are also very good. Of the lightly battered variety, they're nicely golden on the outside and almost creamy smooth on the inside. They're dipping fries, and if you ask for mayo or steak sauce to dip them in no one's going to raise an eyebrow. At least, not the wait staff.
And that's the last bit I need to comment on here. The wait staff is very eager right now, overcome with the need to please. They're young, they're excited, and they're willing to do just about anything to make sure you have a good experience. We'll have to see if that attitude continues.
So is Bill St. the king of Little Rock burgers? That's a hard title to pin down. I guess I'm not ready to concede it just yet; as I said, a month's just not enough time. But if the food's consistent, I could see the title changing hands in the near future.
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Reality Check: The Iron Man Whiplash Whopper at Burger King
Posted by John M. Edwards, April 30, 2010 at 3:15 PM
[Image: Burger Business]
Iron Man, Sherlock Holmes, Iron Man 2. Robert Downey Jr. is certainly having a good run of things lately. The red-and-yellow metal suit he sports is quite a change, too, from the prison orange we saw him in not ten years ago. Most probably thought that he was through—but unlike Nick Nolte or Gary Hart, Downey rose from the ashes. The phoenix in him masterfully recaptured the screen as, aptly, a flashy playboy-genius who reinvents himself as a superhero.
Burger King has partnered with the Iron Man film series to offer a promotional menu item called The Whiplash Whopper, named after the latest film's villain. In this writer's opinion, the new Whopper tries to harness the phoenix-like qualities of both Downey and Tony Stark, Iron Man's true identity. With Burger King serving the XT, the Whopper was almost forgotten, tossed in the corner like an old, forgotten Kid's Meal toy. But the Whopper is back, and it's better than ever.
[Photographs: Robyn Lee]
I picked up the Whiplash Whopper at a drive-through, in a value meal with fries and a Dr. Pepper—I love reviewing things at BK because even if the burger is bad, the fries still rock—and stopped in the parking lot to savor my treat.
At first glance, it was unappealing. I can't hold that against it, though, as every fast food burger fails to live up to the image you see in the advertisements. The first bite was, in one word, underwhelming. (After the Smoky Cheddar XT, I had my expectations set high.) The slice of tomato was from the top of the fruit. It was flavorless, as they usually are, but on top of that, had the hard consistency of a bell pepper. Not what you expect from any tomato. Off it came.
But the next bite allowed me to enjoy the bun and the burger. The bun is a standard sesame seed Whopper bun, fluffy but more cake-like than bun-like. The meat of the bun was almost non-existent; in that regard, it doesn't compete with the XT. (I mean, come on, one Whopper patty?) The patty itself was unremarkable meat, standard Burger King fare.
After two bites, though, things changed. Barring the bad tomato, bland Whopper beef, and thick bun—let's face it, all standard—I started to really enjoy the burger on bite three. There's spicy mayo on the Whiplash, and it really has some kick. On top of that, there are hot crunchy fried red peppers. The heat and the crunch started to bring some of the flavor out of the burger. I could taste a bit more smoke (albeit laboratory-created smoke flavor). Washing the heat down with Dr. Pepper, and then diving in for more, I realized that the burger almost tasted like it had Buffalo wings on it. But as I continued, I refined that thought, and decided it tasted more like a burger with Hot Fries. Anyone ever had Hot Fries? Well, as far as this guy is concerned, it was an inspired combination: Andy Capp's Hot Fries with a burger.
I finished the burger, and audibly sighed, “Awesome”—even though I was alone in the car. I've never tasted heat like that before at a fast-food joint. It definitely needs more than one patty, because the toppings overwhelm the beef (unlike the XT, where there's a nice complement). But great heat and kick made for an unforgettable experience. Like Tony Stark, Iron Man, or Downey Jr. himself, the Whopper is back.
More Burger King Reviews
- Big Burger Showdown: The McDonald's Angus vs. Burger King's XT »
- Burger King's A.1. Steakhouse XT and a Look at Their New Broiler »
- Burger King's Double Cheeseburger »
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Derrick Donovan