El Gaucho, January 24th, 2010

Our first ever Burger Tour dinner was held at El Gaucho in Belltown.  For all of you who don't know, a "Gaucho" is an Argentinian cowboy (!Viva Argentina!), and Argentina is well known for their delicious steaks.  It makes sense then that El Gaucho is mostly known as a classy steakhouse, as Yelp has it rated as the second best steakhouse in Seattle.  While their steaks are generally quite expensive, El Gaucho has an excellent happy hour, which they call Power Hour, where the entire bar menu is 50% off.  Included on the bar menu is the reason for the visit.....the 410 Burger.

410 Burger

  The 410 Burger is a half pound patty of certified angus beef top sirlon, topped with bacon, chedder cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, and thousand island dressing.  It is served on a roll, but we're not sure what type.  On the side is homemade white rose potato salad.  Since this is the only burger on the menu, everyone ordered it.  Everyone ordered the burger to be cooked to "medium," except for Julie, who ordered "medium-well."  We also shared a couple orders of Mac N' Coastal Chedder Cheese.

Amanda, Greg, Kate, Dave, Julie, Cathy, Mike, Landon....with their burgers

Now to the review.  Excellent size, you know you will be full after a 1/2 pound burger.  I (mike) thought my burger was a little dry.  I thought that maybe it was just over cooked, but when I look back at the picture of my half-eaten burger, it looks pretty pink in the middle.  So it seems that it was made to order, but I really didn't taste the moisture I was hoping for.  The tomatos were cut thick, and there were two large slices, which I really liked.  The bacon was good, not too crunchy or too soft.  I would have liked a little more lettuce as I seemed to run out about two-thirds of the way through the burger, and also maybe more thousand island dressing to counter the dryness of the burger. The best part of the burger may have been the bun.  Firm on the outside but soft inside, and sturdy enough to keep everything together the whole way through the meal.  As for the potato salad side dish, it was a nice change from french fries, but I've had better.

Check out this video with some analysis from the other burger eaters.  Sorry for the poor editing, this was my first time.

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Rating and Proposed Rating System
For this first dinner we didn't have any official rating system set up, and everyone was basically put on the spot to give their rating on video (as seen above).  So basically the ratings given were for how the burger was "overall" on a 1-5 scale.  I would personally give the 410 Buger a 3.5.  It was basically a slightly above average burger, and it gets an extra 0.5 points for the great deal during the power hour.  If all the Eaters' ratings are averaged, the burger would rate 3.5.

El Gaucho, 410 Burger

In the future I think we will rate different aspects of the burger separately; patty, bun, toppings, side, & overall.  We will keep the "1-5 Burger" rating scale. This will give us a nice way to compare all the burger joints we visit.  

As for our next Burger Tour dinner....February is looking pretty busy, we'll keep you posted.  We're thinking of going to a more dedicated burger joint with a greater selection of burgers.  We're open to suggestions, so go ahead and make some in the "comments" section.

Here's a couple more pics from El Gaucho.

Greg & Kate

Dave & Julie