Shake Shack UWS: The Airing of Grievances
As a huge Shake Shack fan, I made the trek up to the UWS this weekend to check out the new location. I know you're supposed to give new restaurants some time to work out kinks, but there were quite a few things that were off...
Although I know that Festivus is still a few months off, I present my airing of grievances:
- Hardly and cheese on my cheese fries. A few pumps from a nacho cheese machine....barely coated a few of the fries.
- The cheese on the cheese fries tasted like Nacho cheese? At the MSP location, the cheese is sort of a white-ish, ultra creamy sauce that coats everything nicely. This sauce tasted like straight up nacho cheese....
- The fries themselves were not crispy/crunchy. They were limp...and I even like the frozen fries at the other location.
- Hardly any shack sauce on the shackburger. Also, patty seemed not as juicy as the MSP location. I swear, I wasn't just trying to hate! My girlfriend had the same experience with hers..
- SO MANY KIDDOES. I know its kind of wrong to rip on this place for attracting lots of families, but me and my girlfriend were the only adults without kids, and spending 20 minutes in there was kind of akin to the craziness of Saturday afternoon at Chuck-e-Cheese. No joke. The MSP line is long, but at least the park is pleasent, and you don't have to dodge and duck out of the way of a bunch of tiny tykes.
- The spot was packed at 11:30 on a sunday (as to be expected), but somehow taking your meal to go and sitting on a bench outside of the Natural History Museum is just not as satisfying as sitting at a table in gorgeous MSP.
So, yeah, grumble, grumble, I'lll stick with the downtown location....Been to both locations Serioues Eaters? Any thoughts?
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10 Comments:
@JudgeFudge: First off, I must state I haven't been there. But I want to chime in anyway. As you may know, I'm not a fry fan, so I'm less prone to take fry grievances with as much gravity as fry lovers. That said, sorry to hear about your fry experience.
What I'm most interested in blabbing about is that I talked to a friend at a party this weekend who had just come from SSUWS and mentioned the same thing about the Shack Sauce. She complained that there was too little of it, too. If you watched that video Josh Ozersky did, they showed how they put the sauce on, and I wonder if that's a new technique or that they just haven't trained in the staff up there.
I'm not surprised on the crowding and other issues. And, yeah, if I've gotta eat my SS outdoors, would rather do it in MSP. Those benches outside AMNH are going to be a cold perch. :(
Adam Kuban at 10:42AM on 10/27/08
Personally, I think any grievances should go to Shake Shack's management. But hey, that's just me
LunaPierCook at 10:47AM on 10/27/08
I went last weekend. My fries were perfection. Got plain though, not cheesy, so can't comment on the quality or quantity of sauce. They were extra crispy yet not overcooked, not a single dried out or burnt one, but also not one darker than a bright golden yellow. I think you just got unlucky.
My double shackburger was delicious, juicy and greasy, but i felt it could have used more sauce. Not a deal breaker though.
The line was kinda long but moved along very quickly. Only a few strollers, but this is the UWS, a notorious manhattan breeding ground. Being upset about there being lots of kids at a burger joint on a weekend next to central park and the museum, well, that's like being mad at the sun for rising in the east. I had no trouble sitting at a table. I got there at approx. 11:45 on a sunday.
Personally I found the uws location to be much more pleasant of an experience. At least the home stretch of the line is indoors, which will make it a huge advantage over Mad Sq in the coming months... But please, stay downtown by all means, they need your patronage, and we certainly don't need any more people making our lines longer up here :)
simon at 10:57AM on 10/27/08
@Adam Kuban: I wondered too if there were a few new techniques going on... Aside from the differences noted earlier, I also was suprised to see that my shackburger came with chopped onions and pickles, which I never experienced at SS Mach 1. Not bad pe se, but I think I prefer the old version... If they are experimenting with making SSUWS's food slightly different, I don't really think its a bad thing because they might hit on something great. But, at the same time, the original product is just so hard to beat...
JudgeFudge at 11:01AM on 10/27/08
Including certain obvious information is helpful to people that are unaware of your acronyms and insider lexicon.
Information such as:
State/ Country
City
links.
Why?
Because otherwise, no one will really care.
BentSlightly at 12:02PM on 10/27/08
@BentSlightly, the Shake Shack is a NYC institution. Those who would be interested (and do obviously care) know that:
UWS -- Upper West Side of Manhattan
MSP -- Madison Square Park, the original location
AMNH -- American Museum of Natural History, right by the new location on the UWS
Shake Shack website (with all this info): www.shakeshack.com
No offense intended, please, but this is in a Talk > New York thread.
kfarrel3 at 1:23PM on 10/27/08
@kfarrel3: Thanks for the glossary! I was about to jump in earlier and post this.
Shack website: shakeshacknyc.com
Yes, it is a Talk>NY thread, but it also appears on the Serious Eats main front page, and last time I looked, 80 of the readers are outside NYC. So it can get a bit confusing, and I certainly do feel for folks trying to read the jargon we're all spittin' here.
Adam Kuban at 5:10PM on 10/27/08
I went there today. My only complaint was that their lemonade, which I absolutely love in MSP was very off. It didn't have the same tartness/sweetness to it. It was very watered down and pedestrian.
Oh well.
NYCviaRachel at 12:47AM on 10/28/08
I agree with Simon that kiddos on the UWS, especially near the museum, are inevitable. However, I did have a moderately unpleasant kid-related SS-MSP encounter a couple of weeks ago, so it's not just there. The woman behind me in line was playing catch with her approx. 2 year old son and a child-sized soccer ball. He was not so good at aiming (or caring) so I got bombarded. When the woman's husband came back from taking their daughter to the restroom, he suggested taking both kids to a less crowded area so that their son wouldn't bother the other people on line. (Appreciated!) The woman loudly and shrilly said no, he's staying with me and then proclaimed that "this is a park and if people have a problem with children playing with a ball they should go somewhere else." I'm fine with kids playing in a park, but lady, you're standing on line on the sidewalk for burgers and fries, you're not in a field where being hit by an errant ball would be expected.
urbanruralist at 12:01PM on 10/28/08
I went there last Saturday evening in the rain, and the line, though almost out the door, was remarkably swift. The down side is that I ordered my double cheeseburger rare, and it came out well over the medium they say cook all their meat to. My fries were similarly overcooked, though I've never had that problem at MSP.
blt76 at 2:01PM on 10/28/08