I went to Fiamma Burger yesterday because I needed to get dinner, and I don't eat anything healthier than a bacon cheeseburger these days. At the time, I was starving; I don't know whether it was my tapeworm or by virtue of not having eaten in 36 hours, but I needed to eat. So I navigate past the unwashed masses of downtown Bellingham and enter the burger place.
If you've read any of my other reviews, you know by now that I like to describe the aesthetics of the establishment I'm reviewing. I don't remember one detail from the moment I entered the building to the time my food showed up. The only thing I could think about in my ravenous stupor was getting some meat in my mouth as soon as possible. During that time I must have talked to somebody and ordered my 'healthy option', a bacon cheeseburger, with a strawberry shake and fries. The shake was pretty good... once you get to the actual shake. The glass, while conveniently coming with a long handle spoon, is filled to the top with milkshake. Which is great. But after that, half a can of whipped cream is blasted on the top like a mountain from Candyland towering high above the sides. This means that you can't really mix the whipped cream into the shake without making a big creamy mess all over your food. Rather, the best way to get to the real calories is to muff dive headfirst into the whipped cream until you reach the shake. And you can forget about the straw, I was going to damn near pop a blood vessel before I was able to get milkshake from the bottom to the top. However, once you start going for it with your spoon, the shake was actually very good and came in an amount that allowed me to finish it easily while still satiating my fat ass.
I'm able to write that much about the shake because I finished that after I ate the bacon cheeseburger. Eating the burger was like Will Smith using a neuralizer on me, I don't remember a single thing about the experience. The burger was so completely middle-of-the-road that it passed seamlessly through traffic and out of my mind in under 24 hours. What I do remember is the feeling afterwards: after finishing the burger and looking at the fries, I started to realize that the burger completely destroyed my appetite. Not that it was bad, but after eating the burger I was overcome with the feeling that I never really wanted to eat again.
But eat again I did, because there was still a pile of fries waiting for me on the other side of Whipped Cream Mountain. These fries were good, although nothing about them blew me away. I assume they complemented the burger nicely, or if you're a psycho that dips fries into your shake they should be fine for that too. Either way, after that burger I shoved as many fries into my gob as I could handle and went about my day, never looking back.
Fiamma Burger is the quintessential Bellingham destination. For my experience, 3 stars is the perfect rating: it's as middle as it gets. What good there is here so perfectly outweighs the bad in a way that only a restaurant in Bellingham can. read more