After spending Chuseok running around like crazy and then two weekends recovering I was ready to get out and explore again, so I got a hold of my friend Mika because it’d been many many months since I’d last seen her. Last time we’d hung out we checked out a palace and just wandered around and found an absolutely amazing chocolate shop. I was pretty much up for anything, except burgers. Every burger I’ve had since I’ve been in South Korea had been cold. I’m not sure why or how it happens but every single one has been just a huge disappointment, sadly I’m always with Nathalie when this happens so she’s pretty fed up with burgers too. But Mika was pretty excited for this new burger place so I was up for it, but with apprehension.
Brooklyn: The Burger Joint is a retro styled American burger chain. The one we went to is near Garosugil, the tree-lined street. I didn’t realize that that was where we were going and I hadn’t recognized it because it was practically empty. Last time I walked around Garosugil it was packed and hard to get around, in the hot end-of-May weather.
With neon lights making up the restaurants name , a fun throw back to our childhoods interior with Captain Planet and He-man posters on the wall, and old-timey commercials playing at the cash register for special drinks. Their menu was pretty impressive with a decent list of burger options and a horribly tempting long list of milkshakes. I ordered The Cheese Burger (5 oz.) which was a plain cheese burger with American cheese and grilled onion. You can also get burgers that are 7 oz, but I wanted to try and have room for one of the milkshakes. Mika ordered their New Mexico cheese burger which was a burger with monterey jack and a jalapeno spread. I also made mine a meal with a half-size order of cheese fries and canned soda (they also serve plain fries and sweet potato fries). Mika got jalapeno poppers which were good but a bit too spicy. (for me, she loved them)
There was a bit of confusion with the drinks and somewhere along the line mine never came, so we reordered it as a Pepsi without lemon and it came about 10 minutes later in the most intense glass of lemon slices I’ve ever seen. It overpowered any Pepsi I tried to pour into the glass.
My burger was good, it was really drippy from the oils of the meat and whatever they used to grill the onions but it wasn’t cold or disappointing and the smaller burger was really filling.
We both decided we wanted a milkshake but we also didn’t want to spend all day in the burger joint so we added it to our tab when we went to pay. Mika ordered their golden oreo with caramel and after a ton of decision making I decided on their burnt marshmallow and nutella milkshake. There are at least 66 different milkshake options, everything from vanilla, side by side (banana and chocolate) to alcoholic milkshakes like rose tequila strawberry, malibu orange, or amaretto banana. I loved how long their list was and how many different options there were for milkshakes and would like to go back and try more when I’m not already full. You can even make your milkshake a malt.
The service was decent, we’d loose them for awhile, but it gave us plenty of time to look over our menu. A couple things got lost in translation but the menu itself is English on one side and Korean on the other so it’s pretty easy to decide what you want.