Review by Meredith Brody; Photos by Janine Kahn

There seems to have been much pent-up lust for upscale fast food (in the person of slider-like mini burgers) in Downtown San Francisco, as can be seen by the briskly-moving line that wraps almost continually around the outside of Best-O-Burger, a confidently-named slot of a shop clinging to the northernmost edge of Belden Place. (89 Belden Place, to be exact).

The White-Castle-sized-but-not-White-Castle-cooked (i.e., griddled instead of steamed) burgers can be ordered singly ($1.79, $1.89 w/cheese) or in bags of one or two or three (which include excellent French fries and even better fried onion strings, called, in backward fashion, strings for the fries and Ring-O’s for the onions). Or even in boxes packed with twenty to take back to the office ($35.80).

It’s “the original iron skillet seared gourmet mini burger TM” as per their website, made from 100% all natural fresh Angus beef, served on tiny burger buns “oven baked fresh all day,” also per the website, with a schmear of thousand-islandy sauce and not much else. There’s even a “secret menu,” (check the website: a Fat Bob is two BOB burgers one bun), though at this early stage most of its secrets (like a daily special burger called Le Magnifique Especiale de Baron de Monte Carlo) are tagged as Coming Soon!

On the day we were there, the gelat-o shake (the gelato made fresh daily “by a guy from Rome”) flavors available sounded too exotic for us ( we remember coffee-mocha and lemon; we were in the mood for a nice chocolate or vanilla), but we made our own Arnold Palmer (tea and lemonade) from the soda dispenser in the corner. It seemed cruel that Best-O-Burger is located on the prime outdoor eating spot of table-lined Belden Place, where there is no designated Best-O-Burger seating, but we took our baby cheeseburgers, strings, and Ring-Os across the street to the low wall surrounding the office building on the corner of Pine and Kearny, and had a lovely urban picnic. We missed the snap of raw onion, and the tiny burger was (almost inevitably) overcooked under its good-tasting charred crust, but we enjoyed our shared $7.46 three-cheeseburger bag. (Especially the greasy-good mis-named onion Ring-Os!)

Best-O-Burger is the flagship of a chain, dreamed up by a number of localites, the most recognizable of whom is probably Nick Graham, of Joe Boxer fame. Check out the real-time burgers consumed counter on the website.