Burgerhaus

I kept forgetting about this place. Unfortunately, I think part of it may be its location. It’s on the canal, which I hope becomes a more well-traversed place, but when the weather is really bad, it’s hard to imagine the location to be a super popular one. Also, it doesn’t help that the parking is a bit confusing. But just so you know, there is a garage that is attached to the restaurant—just drive west on 9^th Street until it dead ends. There’s a parking garage there that you can park in for free if you ask for a validation from the restaurant (park on the bottom level and you can park right at one of the restaurant’s entrances).

I met my friend @wibia—he’s always willing to try a new burger place. We ate early and we’re the only ones there for a while. Like I said, I worry about this location—the crowd picked up a bit, but the place was never very busy. I ordered the “Haus burger” ($9). You get to pick your cheese and add additional items if you like. They come standard with bibb lettuce, tomato and sliced red onions.  I just got cheddar (it’s white cheddar) and told them to leave the tomato off because I am wary of tomatoes in the winter. I also asked them to add garlic may—I find often a special sauce on a burger can really make a difference. They also asked how we wanted them cooked. I ordered mine medium and wibia medium rare. I was interested to see how this came out. I liked the soft brioche bun—it held up well to the burger but was soft enough to squish down so it wasn’t so big. The lettuce and red onion were nice and fresh and crisp and I liked that they use bibb lettuce because I like the relative softness of it—I hate when you get a big piece of hard Romaine heart on a sandwich. I also liked the thick cut dill pickle slices served on the side of the burgers.

The cheese was nice and melty and I appreciated the additional moisture from the mayo, particularly since, as it turned out, they did not cook that burger medium. I would say well done was more like it. And @wibia’s burger was at best, medium-well. Sigh. I mean, it was still decent because the beef was high quality, but it could have been a lot better if it was actually cooked to order. 

As for the flavor of his burger, he tried one of their combinations, the Monaco ($13). This had a beef burger, white cheddar cheese, sautéed onions and mushrooms, avocado, arugula and burgundy wine mayo served on a pretzel bun. It sounded interesting and included all things that I like for sure. Not sure how I felt about it all together. It may have been just a little much. It was kind of so many things; you couldn’t really appreciate any of them a lot. I was not a fan of this pretzel bun because it was really dense. I guess in some ways that is good to hold up to so many toppings, but the top of the bun didn’t mush down and it was one that was for me, hard to fit into my mouth. Overall, I preferred mine with fewer toppings and the softer bun.

We both had fries alongside our burgers. They were served in very cute little miniature fry baskets, and were fresh and fairly crisp. There just wasn’t anything about them that really stood out. They were just kind of middle of the road fries. They do offer a bunch of fries prepared and topped in different ways—I’d be tempted to see if they would offer this with the side of fries. Spicy blue cheese or garlic parmesan sounds good.

I’m glad to see a new restaurant going in along the canal. It is certainly an underserved area. As far as the food goes, it was a decent average burger for me. Not sure it was enough to make me want to go out of my way to get another one. There were some tasty sounding things on the appetizer menu—I wonder how they are? And there’s a fairly extensive craft beer list (And I like the way they give you beer pairing suggestions with many of the food items), but you know that’s not luring me in. Anyone else been?

Burgerhaus

335 West 9^th Street

Indy 46202

317/434-HAUS

www.indy.burgerhausrestaurants.com