Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I live right between EARL, Ann's Snack Bar, and the Vortex. Personally I like the EARL best of the lot. I travel a lot and eat burgers a lot and search out sites like these to find favorites; and still, of all of them, the EARL's a fav.

I love that place in Le Parker Meridien, though. ;)

I work in a restaurant in a small town in Texas, Greek Bros. I have to say the flat Mushroom Jack Burger or the Cheddar Bacon Cheddar Burger there are among the best I have ever eaten. The burgers are 1/2 pound of meat, each, and the meat is from a local meat market. They cost $10 each, a plain cheeseburger is $7.00. I doubt any "burger crtio" is going to ever come to a town of 12,000 people in south Texas, so all I can say is that I agree that they can't claim that their picks are the best in the USA.

I'm not sure where I fit in as a Stabucks customer. In a perfect world, where I had lots of time, I doubt I would ever set foot in a Starbucks. I prefer making good coffee at home and I rarely drink coffee after 3:00pm.

Yes, you can get better coffee, but Starbucks is predictable and extremely convenient to my work office. Their "Frankenfood Egg Sandwiches" are pretty terrible, but guess what? They are also very convenient for people on the move and quickly get some grease, calories and sodium into your system. I think there are basically two types of Starbucks customers, corporate slaves like me, who just need a strong coffee fix during the day, don't care too much about the prices, don't care that "Mo's Coffee has ten times better coffee," but it is 12 blocks away, and just care about speed, caffeine, and convenience.

The other type Starbucks customer, seems to have all the time in the world, they sit there, read papers, play with laptops, chat with friends, etc..

My guess is there reasons for patronizing Starbucks is much the same though, convenience and predictability.

The Black Angus burger at Stoudt's brewpub in Adamstown PA is sublime. It's all about the bakery fresh roll baked on-premise

PS. They dont as sh1ty as it does in that pic above.

The best I can tell, the people dissing the Starbucks breakfast sandwiches have not actually eaten one. I had my first in Philadelphia last weekend. It was really good. It was not an Egg McMuffin (which I appreciate for being the healthiest widely available breakfast sandwich, but the spongy muffin and American "cheese" are far from good). I had the ham, egg and cheese version. The Black Forest ham and cheddar cheese were both really good, as was the slightly oversized English muffin. There was nothing special about the egg part, but neither was their anything objectionable about it. It was by far the best breakfast fast food offering I've ever had of the bread/egg/meat/cheese variety.

The people who complain about appearance of the sandwiches remind me of the time a friend of mine was invited to judge the baked goods competition at the state fair. A number of the people on the panel with her wanted to hand out ribbons based on appearance alone without actually tasting the baked goods. Same concept.

Starbucks was in need of more non-sweet breakfast selections. They hit this one out of the ball park. I can't wait until they're in all locations.

Frankly, I'd be happy not to run into any of the grousers in Starbucks.

Boston is a pretty lousy burger town. It's a compeltel obsession with big huge mostrous pub burgers. That said, Abe and Louie's makes a kickass burger.

Despite this review, the general concensus of these sandwiches seems to be pretty popular. Living in Wisconsin, I have yet to try one, but several forums say the things are pretty good. And yes...even worth the money.

I find this new sandwich thing a pretty big plus in the Starbucks consumer world. While Starbucks will always be known for it's coffee, having them offer a little variety is nice. We all love convenience. And this is very convenient.

lshannon's idea for regionalizing the Starbucks' food offerings is a good one. I'd extend the idea to all food items. In NYC, Dean & Deluca, whose coffee IMO is vastly inferior to that of Starbucks, puts together a great baked goods spread because they buy from all sorts of local purveyors, and they tell you who the items are from (Doughnut Plant donuts, Sacramouche orange muffins, etc.). Starbucks may be too big for this kind of variety, though.

Donuts with no fat? Fries not loaded with calories? Aw come on now Aunty Em the tin man and I didn't lke the fries after McDonald's stop coating them wth beef tallow. Are they going to ban cheese wiz? Luckily I live in a place where no one cares about fat and the politics are still about land use and not nutrition. Our locals yocals aren't educated enough to delve into anything close to that for decades if ever.
I agree with earlier posters if you want to clog your arteries it i your business. They are till going to sell thousands of foods in your local grocery store that have trans fats, hidden ones.
This is just like prohibition, it is silly and eventually it will not be big brother's job to watch what you eat.