THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBURGER

Cathy and I have started our search for the Best Burger in Pittsburgh. It's going to be an ordeal, I can already tell. Our benchmark is Remedy in Lawrenceville, which has a really fucking good burger. The internet apparently had not heard about it, however, as all the top ten lists on the subject are jammed with Fat Heads and Tessaro's and (what the fuck) national burger chains.

Our first expedition was to Fat Heads in the South Side. I wanted to see if it lived up to the hype and for some reason secretly hoped it didn't (probably because it's in the South Side), but also wanted to get one of the obvious choices out of the way. Cathy just wanted to eat a delicious burger. I also forgot my camera. Whoops.

Here's our rubric for Fat Head's:

The hamburgers themselves were fine, nothing special, maybe a little bland. Not too juicy but also not too greasy. However, both of our burgers were about half a step under cooked. Cathy ordered a medium rare and got rare and I ordered a medium and got a medium rare. For me this is a huge problem -- not only did they not cook the burger as ordered, the difference between medium rare and medium is fucking continental. If I was getting a steak and it was undercooked a little, that's fine, whatever, but a burger? Now I have to spend the meal wondering if I'm going to get salmonella or AIDS, and THAT'S WHY I ORDER IT FUCKING MEDIUM. I do not want to be seeing pink in my burger. ;}

Anyway, there were a lot of options for different burgers, but mainly just with different cheeses and things (one with a pierogi on it! how Pittsburgh!) but nothing too exotic. Cathy got a bacon and blue cheese burger which was actually blue cheese dressing (ick) and I got a burger with provolone, sauteed onions and red peppers, which was pretty good but many of which slid off before I even got the burger.

This fatty was everywhere.

There was no choice of side and fries came standard. Cathy was a little disappointed but to me that seems pretty normal. I thought they were pretty good fries, and greatly helped by the fact that my burger came with rosemary mayonnaise, which was super delicious. It was a decent value with both burgers costing about $9 and we were not left hungry or too full, though we are always willing to be challenged in this regard.

Fat Heads is totally Pittsburgh-ed out, which I guess is typical, but I still don't really get it; at least one person at every table was wearing 'the black and gold.' Oh wait, I guess there was a Steelers game that afternoon. . . whatever. It was pretty loud, acoustically, and we might have been seated under an air duct because we were fucking freezing. The beer selection is pretty damn good, with a ton of beers on tap that are NOT Budweiser and co. Our service was brusque, though, and the waitress did not seem to give too many shits about how we enjoyed our meal.

OVERALL: If you are already in the Southside and want a decent burger to go with your beer, check out Fat Heads.

REMEDY: Still way better.