While planning our recent trip to Austin, Texas, I knew we’d have to find a few burgers and compare them to what I’ve had so far in the Yeg Burger Odyssey. We narrowed the list to about a half a dozen possibilities, and figured we’d just fit them into our hectic schedule of bbq eating and happy hour debauchery wherever we could.

The first one we managed to try was at 24 Diner.

There were a lot of burgers that appealed to me on the menu at 24 Diner, but I went with the Bacon Avocado, with charred poblanos and smoked aioli.

24 Diner Burger

This was a damn fine burger. The bun was soft, the meat was tasty and moist, and the toppings were adding a lot of extra flavour. There really wasn’t anything I didn’t like about this burger. Great first impression of Austin burgers for sure.

Our second foray into the Texas burger world  was our most anticipated stop but, unfortunately, also our most disappointing.

Everything about Hopdoddy says I should love this place – its all house made or locally sourced, and the atmosphere is second to none. Visually it’s everything you could want in a burger bar, and the menu sounds fantastic, but the burger just wasn’t very good.. We ordered the much recommended “Primetime”, which has beef, brie, truffle aioli, arugula, caramelized onions, and steak sauce. The patty had a strange spongey texture and a significant amount of gristle. The flavour of the onions was really overpowering, and there was way too much of them to enjoy any other part of the burger. The unfortunate taste lingered for hours. The truffle aioli also was really strong, and I didn’t like the way any of the flavours worked together.

We actually only ordered 1 burger to split, and we left about half of it behind.

Hopdoddy’s Primetime

As a side we ordered the fries with Green Chili Queso, which was absolutely fantastic! I wish I could have scraped all the stuff I didn’t like off the burger and pour the queso sauce over the top. It’s weeks later, and Robyn and I are still talking about that green chili queso, so I guess I better figure out how to make it at home.

Hopdoddy green chili queso fries

Stop number 3 on the Austin burger tour was a food truck we had just stumbled upon after a particularly fruitful happy hour at Searsucker a couple nights earlier.

Svante’s Stuffed Burgers had a burger that we just had to come back and try- The Space Jam. It’s stuffed with jalapeno havarti and a bacon-onion jam, and topped with arugula and roasted garlic aioli.

I’m not usually the biggest fan of stuffed burgers, as the ones I’ve had tend to just squirt all over the place and you’re left with a chasm in the middle of the burger where all the good stuff used to be. This one, however, held together very nicely and had flavour to spare. Both Robyn and I thought this was the best burger we had in Austin.

Svante’s Space Jam Burger

We had planned on calling it quits for burgers at that point, but we happened to be driving by a local burger chain the next day and decided to drop in and try out the fast food burgers there.

P-Terry’s  has 8 locations in Austin and area, and had a lot of that fast food vibe to it. Robyn found the burger reminded her of Dairy Queen burgers, and she’s not wrong. I felt like it was somewhere between Dairy Queen and McDonalds, but it was missing one consistent factor of a McDonald’s burger…

Gristle.

The quality of the beef seemed to be much higher than at McD’s, and the flavour was pretty darn good considering the price for a double with cheese was a paltry $3.50! Make no mistake, this is a fast food style burger but to be perfectly honest I would take this burger over a few of the pre-made shitty burgers in the Yeg Burger Odyssey that I’ve had to date.

P-Terry’s Double Cheeseburger

It seems to me the biggest difference between Edmonton burgers and Austin burgers is their emphasis on using fresh, quality beef. Even the places we didn’t have a burger at seemed to be making their own patties. With the abundance of frozen grocery store patties i’ve had thus far in the Odyssey, that was a welcome sight.

Oh, and there’s the price too. Both cities have some good burgers if you search for them, but the good ones in Austin cost noticeably less.