Lonnieburger Baskets: Habits

Wait, there are other people wandering the Queen City trying to find the best burgers around and blogging about their quest?

Why, yes, there are, and it turns out that one of them works with The Girl, so this most recent Lonnieburger Baskets excursion became a double date with Ryan and Meghan.

I warn you in advance that some of the photos from our excursion will be augmented by those taken by Meghan and posted on her above-linked blog as well as by 5chw4r7z who took this photo of Habits's extremities.

Habits is a place that The Girl and I had been to a looong time ago, back when The Best Man lived in town the first time and was living a solid but walkable distance from Habits. That's been back before I found Princeton, so it's been at least a decade since our last visit. I remember that one fondly as we had a solid Sunday morning brunch to help The Best Man clear his head from a revelous Saturday night.

We're a lot more adultish now, though, so we headed to Habits on a Saturday night before hitting another of our haunts from back in those days: RP McMurphy's where Waiting on Wally (we know the bass player) was playing.

According to Cincinnati Magazine, Habits's Godzilla Burger ranks as the #22 best burger in the city. I, of course, won't be trying to take down Godzirra, but The Girl was willing to give it a try.

Let's turn to the numbers.

Burger

• That's my burger right there. I need to get back into the swing of taking more photos when I'm going to be reviewing a burger joint. There's supposed to be a shot of the burger patty itself so I can show you just how pink this one came out. I did, admittedly, order the thing medium, but this one was at least medium rare. It wasn't the scary pink that I'd gotten at The Pub a while back, but it was certainly on the rare side of medium. The patty had a nice flavor, a little spice, a little blackened crust from the grill, but it's nothing revelatory. Burger - 6 

Toppings

• I'm relying on Meghan's photos for this one because she took photos of the four burgers around our table, and I only got mine and The Girl's. Mine starts things off and is a standard bacon cheeseburger that I get all over the place.
  
  Wait, where's the bacon?
  
  I know I ordered bacon. C'mon, folks, if I'm ordering bacon, I'm expecting my burger to come out with bacon. Throwing two slices of bacon on a side plate and bringing it out apologetically after the fact isn't going to cut it when we're going for Best Burger in Cincinnati. That'll be a point deduction further down the line.
  
  Let's try this again.

Toppings

• Bacon, cheddar, tomato, lettuce, chopped onions - that's what I got. At least, that's what I eventually got on my burger. I know that I certainly didn't expect to get chopped onions on my burger, and it seems odd to me to get large chopped, raw, white onions on a burger at a burger place. The rest of the crew went with the more daring burgers: black and blue, Godzilla (hold the spicy mayo), and the White Hot Burger. Everybody enjoyed the toppings, but nobody raved about any of them. The Girl's Godzilla supposedly came with 'spicy onion straws' which suggested thin, crispy onion things, but they turned out to be undercooked but tasty onion rings. The undercooked was a problem because The Girl only likes onions if they've been cooked past recognition, almost to the brown paste stage. She wasn't happy with the toppings (ironically). Toppings - 5

A few more photos (thanks to Meghan) of the various toppings...

Fries 

• In a nice touch, Habits offers fries a few different ways: regular, Texas, cajun, and sweet potato. The Texas, which I got, just meant salt and pepper on regular fries. The cajun got some spices, and the sweet potato were...um...made of sweet potatoes. The Texas fries weren't anything to write home about. I don't normally pepper my fries, but the pepper they used didn't do much other than put a couple of black spots on the fries. The cajun didn't, honestly, look much different either (the last photo just above shows cajun fries.) The sweet potato fries weren't dark enough and still had a chewy texture that is, admittedly, hard to get rid of in sweet potato fries. The Girl reports that they had a slight breading and didn't taste of being freshly-cut.
  
  The fries on our side of the table were also served just barely above room temperature. This clearly wasn't Habits's best night out. Fries - 5

Ambiance 

• Top photo is from Hello Cincinnati...bottom from 5chw4r7z.
  
  Habits is a neighborhood bar, split in half for a bar side and a restaurant side. We sat in the bar side almost all the way to the front. The restaurant side is certainly quieter and has a better view of the street with Habits's corner location and full run of windows rounding that corner. The bar side had a decent selection of televisions, something I usually loath but appreciated this night as we got to watch Butler beat Pittsburgh as dinner was winding down. I like the neighborhood bar feel of the place, but it's the same neighborhood bar feel that you can find somewhere in pretty much every neighborhood around the country. Ambiance - 7 

Cost

• $7 for the burger and fries + $0.75 for cheese, lettuce, onion, tomato + $0.75 for bacon + $1.50 for a diet coke = $10 total...right in the sweet spot of middle ground Cost - 5

Other stuff

• The fries were served cold. -1 
• The bacon was forgotten. -1 
• They do have a full bar with an excellent beer selection at decently cheap prices. +1 
• Most of the folks in the bar were with me in cheering Go Butler! +1

Where does that put us for Habits? They've earned 28 points for Habits.

I think the place is overrated at 22nd in the city, but they might've just had a bad night. Without the two screw-ups (fries, bacon), they still would only have been at 30.

• Terry's Turf Club - 45
• Cafe de Wheels - 44
• Senate - 43
• Five Guys Burgers and Fries - 36 
• Roxy's - 36
• VanZandt - 34
• Gabby's - 34 
• Oakley Pub & Grill - 34 
• Quatman's - 32 / 34.5
• Troy's - 32 
• The Pub at Rookwood Mews - 28
• Habits Cafe - 28
• Graffiti Burger - 27
• Arthur's - 26
• Sammy's - 25

That's a lot of places grouped there in the bottom, but I would say it's about right. Habits and The Pub are about equal with both being slightly better than Arthur's and Graffiti. Sammy's should be lowered some, but I'm not going back to re-review it.

All in all, if I've made it all the way to Oakley to go to Habits, I'm crossing the street to the Oakley Pub & Grill instead - or just rolling a little further down toward the river to Terry's.

Next up, The Girl and I head to the Wildflower Cafe in a couple of weeks.

In doing my typical research for these posts, I came upon somebody else who's rating the best burgers in the Queen City and providing feedback for the blogosphere. Check 'em out, why doncha?