City of Burgers: Orson's Not-So-New Lunch Burger

Actually, the only thing new about the Orson burger is that you can eat it while midday light is filtering through the atrium ceiling. The SOMA restaurant launched lunch service today (Tue.-Fri., 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.), and the burger ($12) is sure to be a mainstay. There's good reason for that: It's hyper-meaty, radiating a pure-beef taste so frank it achieves a kind of intimacy.

Of course, the house-baked bun helps. Fragile without being flimsy, it's the patty's perfect squishy frame. A trio of sauces consists of truffle mayonnaise, a squidgy spread of hard-cooked egg and bacon called "Cobb salad," and housemade barbecue sauce, which rocks an eerie duality of perfumey aromatics and lip-searing heat. Unlike the dinner burger, its lunchtime sibling comes a la carte, meaning you have to order the restaurant's signature duck-fat fries ($7) if you want them. (Basically, you want them.) Granted, this isn't the cheapest workday lunch you'll ever lay out for, but it might be among the most deftly engineered.
Orson 508 Fourth St. (at Bryant), 777-1508