The. Worst. Thing. I've. Ever. Eaten.
My $10 hamburger at Just Jakes earned that lofty distinction.
Despite the fact that I ordered it medium rare, this burger had all the succulent goodness of building materials. Not even sheet rock. Or wood flooring.
More like particle board. Moldy particle board.
You know those places that lovingly hand-form a patty from dry-aged Kobe Beef mixed with a little hand ground brisket and cook the burger to sous-vide perfection with the temperature controlled to the single digit?
The Jake Burger is the polar opposite of that. I can't imagine the level of neglect that went into the burger I ate.
My first guess is that the cook ran out of burgers in the walk-in freezer and in desperation killed the raccoon that had been raiding the dumpster. But I realized that was too much effort. More like burger had been *in* the dumpster and was being, um, repurposed.
There were subtle overtones of rubber--Michelin Primacy XWX, if my palate serves me well--which explains what look to be tire marks. Alas, I fear that the secrets of a burger this bad may be lost to history.
Which is a shame because understanding Jake's methods might yield a recipe for that elusive Perfect Burger. Take the Just Jakes recipe, and do exactly the opposite. The result would be Burger Nirvana.
Or to put it aontehr way if you tried to feed this to a prisoner of war it would be a violation of the Geneva Convention.
Would my dog eat this? No, because I love her far to much to feed it to her.
I could go on, but I won't. Bottom line: McDonald's produces a (barely) edible burger.
And Just Jakes can't.
In fairness, I will say that this was not the Worst *Meal* Ever.
Partly because I was there with my lovely wife and friends we don't get to see often enough.
The room is nice enough. The service was fine.
The cover band, The Captains of Leisure, were actually quite good mixing in Steely Dan with (ugh) Chicago. They were the reason we came and the set was solid, although the volume was cranked to ear-splitting levels.
I've lived in Montclair a long time, and I always vaguely wondered why I'd never eaten at Just Jakes. Now I know.
When I told another friend that we had stopped into JJ, he said "Just don't eat there," before I could even say word one about the War Crime Burger. "A waste of a liquor license," he added.
I couldn't agree more. read more