Today’s Groupon is $4 for $8 at Top Notch. No brainer. But what’s with that photo–that ain’t no burger you can get at Top Notch! There’s also one for $5 for $10 at In the Buns, also with a fake burger photo. It’s National Burger Week.
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Top Notch is now serving tater tots! Fried okra is another one of their new sides.
Top Notch Tots!
Some important changes are afoot at Top Notch. They are now open Sundays! They now accept credit cards! And they have a new website (although it took forever to load for me…details)! Good stuff. “Like” them on Facebook while you are at it.
Huge news–Top Notch has been sold to new owners, who fortunately say that “nothing will change.” Sounds like a good preemptive transition plan which will hopefully preserve the character of Top Notch.
Full story here: http://www.austin360.com/food-drink/for-new-owners-of-top-notch-change-isnt-679399.html?cxntcid=breaking_news
Made it out to one of my favorite burger places for the first time in a long time, Top Notch on Burnet Road. It’s a rare original in Austin, going on 40+ years now. There’s a very family friendly feel to it with the mother-daugther combo usually running “the front of the house” (I learned that phrase on Top Chef). The burger is flame-kissed over charcoal briquettes, thin patty. Fries are frozen. Onion rings are made in-house and are tasty. The fried chicken is good. The classic signage is great. They offer curbside service in addition to a dining room. They bus your tables for you (you pick up your food at the counter). Coke, not Pepsi. There is nothing not to like about Top Notch.
One thing that resonates with me about Top Notch is the configuration of the #2 with cheddar. It’s the burger I always order, and it’s so perfectly conceived that I don’t have to alter anything about it–comes with grated cheddar, mayo, lettuce, tomato, pickle and diced onion on a toasted bun. That’s the perfect cheeseburger setup in my book. The fact that Top Notch has this precise burger configuration as a standard menu item indicates a harmonious concordance between my burger psyche and Top Notch that’s hard to deny.
The beef at Top Notch cannot boast a hormone-free grass-fed antibiotic-free etc. provenance, like so many of the new burger spots, and the fries are not fresh cut…but it has something special about it that more than compensates for any of those shortcomings.
Flame kissed
Standard American Burger Specimen
Cheddar!
Cross section
Ho hum fries
Onion rings--very tasty
Dessert available
Old school interior
Great sign (tshirts available inside)
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Mike 7:29 pm on May 27, 2011 Permalink |
The Top Notch burger, much like the Hill-Bert’s burger, is one of those burgers that tastes a lot better than it looks. Come to think of it, there is usually an inverse relationship between appearance and quality when it comes to dive burgers. I think the Casino El Camino burger is one of the few great dive burgers whose appearance directly indicates the quality of its taste.