On my quest for the best burger in New Hampshire, I decided to stop in at a rather local joint: the 1750 Taphouse, right here in Bedford, New Hampshire. The menu has a fair few choices, but I chose their most unconventional burger : the S’all Goodman Burger. It has all the basics of a single patty, cheese, tomato, and lettuce on a bun, but it also comes with smashed tater tots, an avocado spread, thick slabs of pork belly, and a fried egg to top it off. It slots rather neatly into the niche of a “breakfast burger” in the sense that the individual ingredients feel more fitting at Sunday brunch than on a burger.
But, the unusual toppings are what make the burger as good as it is. In particular, the pork belly adds a meaty, crispy, and fatty flavor that can be somewhat dominating, but for the most part diversifies the flavor portfolio between it, the tomato, and the avocado. That diverse flavor portfolio is the strongest characteristic in my opinion, and exactly why the eccentric toppings are so good.
With all that being said, there are some issues to be had. The sheer amount of toppings causes the burger to fall apart over the course of the meal, which makes the process of eating this burger quite messy. The avocado spread falls out quite easily, and a napkin on one’s lap would be advisable for this meal. This burger is also quite large, so large in fact that I couldn’t get it all down during my meal. While this translates to a high score for size, the size is a contributing factor to the burger’s instability, due to it slowly losing more and more structural integrity with each bite and not being able to down it fast enough for the burger to remain stable. I had praised the burger’s flavor portfolio earlier, but the added tater tots didn’t do much for the burger and became a bit of an issue as they also started falling out. These issues aren’t very major, but they do detract from the overall quality of the burger.
Finally, I would like to talk about the overall restaurant experience. The 1750 Taphouse is a rather nice location, but it’s not very individual in its presentation. Despite the name, it doesn’t lean very hard into evoking a “pre-industrial” or colonial style. It feels superficially stylized, with only wooden flooring and a couple bathroom signs to make it distinct from a standard restaurant. For the most part, it feels like an upscale pub, complete with HD TVs dotted along the walls and modern-styled light fixtures. I won’t say it’s a bad look, but it doesn’t warrant a high score. That being said, the service was great, and I have no real complaints about the restaurant aside from feeling that the style is half-baked.
How the scoring system works:
There are four categories I grade a good burger on: its size, its flavor, how original/unique it is, and the overall mood of the restaurant. Each of these is graded on a 10-point scale, then weighed individually to create an overall rating out of 100. Flavor has a weighting of 4, originality has a weighting of 3, size has a weighting of 2, and restaurant ambiance has a weighting of 1.
Scores:
Size: 18/20
Flavor: 32/40
Originality: 27/30
Restaurant Ambiance: 7/10
Overall: 84/100
In a word: “99.1% pure burgers!”
