Today's AHT reader recommendation comes from Nicholas Chen, who has previously shared reviews of the octopus salad-topped cod burger from MOS Burger in Taiwan and the Google cafeteria burger in New York City. He's checking out the burger scene in his new home of Philadelphia, but this burger unfortunately left him a bit disappointed. If you have more recs for him or think Pub & Kitchen deserves another chance, let him know! Read more about his food adventures at My Inner Fatty, or follow him on twitter at @myinnerfatty. If anyone else wants to share some burger intel, here's how to do it. —The Mgmt.

[Photograph: Nicholas Chen]

Having been spoiled by tremendous burgers in New York City for the past four years (from Shake Shack to Veselka), I went to Pub & Kitchen with the hopes of at least satisfying my lust for a good thick pub-style burger in Philly. Their menu is fairly extensive, and their list of beers on tap is equally impressive, but none of that seems very important when compared to their burger. After being heralded by several sites as Philadelphia's top burger, Pub & Kitchen has a fair amount of reputation to live up to (not that I would have any basis of comparison to other places in Philly), but if you're being called the best in the city, I would think it should be as spectacular as described.

On their menu, there's actually two burgers: the plain burger, and the Windsor Burger, labeled with only the description of homemade bacon and English cheddar, with the Windsor accounting for all the praises. It seems innocent enough—people like bacon, and people like cheddar. Putting things that people like on burgers makes sense.

When it arrived, all I saw was a behemoth plate of fries on one half, and a pile of... stuff on the other. It didn't even really look like a burger. Covering half the bun was a giant pile of caramelized red onions, lettuce, and tomatoes, and on the other half was patty, cheddar, and bacon. After some reconstruction, and some trimming of extra toppings, you end up with a something that resembles a pretty decent pub burger.

As far as taste, the patty is sufficiently juicy, which might actually be an understatement, and is cooked to perfection (where medium rare means medium rare), all in spite of its thickness. (Sorry, no cross-sectional shot here; it was simply a mess after cutting in half.) The bread was excellent as well, a brioche bun grilled to have just an ever so gentle char on the inside.

If it were simply bun and meat, it could easily be considered a great, if not remarkable, burger, but the problem is they decided to stack toppings on to high heaven. The cheddar does its job just fine, but the bacon is on the thick side, is less than crisp, and leads to several bites containing long strands of pork, while the remainder of the burger gets stripped naked. Lettuce and tomatoes are entirely a preference thing, so I won't comment on that, but the onions just felt like they didn't belong. They were cold, lackluster in flavor, and ultimately a distraction with their mushy consistency. All in all, it left me wishing I went for the plain burger instead, which probably would've been a better decision in hindsight.

Maybe I got it on a bad day, maybe this deserves to be called Philly's top burger, but for the sake of Philadelphia, I hope what I got isn't. —Nicholas Chen

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