[Photographs: Meredith Smith]

The menu at Island Creek Oyster Bar looks like a periodic table of raw oysters and shellfish. Conspicuously situated among all those fruits of the sea is a burger. It didn't take more than a few fanciful seconds of mentally slurping down some oysters and a well-made cocktail or two for me to convince myself that this burger needed trying.

The burger at Island Creek shares a family resemblance to its Commonwealth Hotel burger sibling at Eastern Standard: It's a similar size and weight, and also comes on a brioche-style bun. The differences are that the Island Creek bun has a poppy and sesame seed-striped top, and the patty is made from ground Myer Ranch chuck roll, with default toppings of house-cured bacon and Grafton cheddar.

If you're as in the dark about this chuck roll business as I was, it's part of the shoulder. It implies the portion of the chuck where the more choice cuts of meat come from and it has extra fat and connective tissue, which helps maintain the moisture (at least according to The Kenji, and he has been called a meat hero, so we have to trust him. The internet verifies his claims; Beefretail.org says chuck rolls "are the new frontier of beef cuts.") The meat was perfectly seasoned and the chuck roll makes for a full-flavored burger. The kitchen produced a nice grill-marked sear on the patty.

For $4 you can add to the "basic" burger a fried oyster, pickled onions, and horseradish sauce. I debated long and hard about adding the fried oyster, but since most of Island Creek Oyster Bar's oysters are under $4 and I have a bias that frying is for inferior oysters, I couldn't get on board with the price tag. Those pickled onions, however, were calling my name, and I got them on the side.

A few leaves of well-ribbed lettuce, pearl onions, and halved pickles adorn the plate. They use small whole pickles that could be piled on the patty, but they're easier to just pick up and eat on the side. The accompanying pearl onions also pose a stacking challenge. However, the side of sliced pickled onions I requested on the side were easy to add and were in little danger of slipping off the burger. They were just the sharp bite needed to cut through the fat from the cheese, bacon, and beef.

Typically I don't like cheddar because I think the texture becomes grainy and broken when melted, but the Grafton cheddar held up fine and melted evenly over the bacon strips. And I used to assume that crispy bacon was the best bacon to use on a cheeseburger, but the softness of the bacon on the Island Creek burger put it more in a filet mignon camp and made me completely reconsidered my crispy bacon position with regard to burgers.

The burger just had one downfall: It was overcooked. The medium rare looked more like medium well. (I have a slight drawl when I am in the presence of great cocktails, by the way. There is no way that even a native Bostonian would ever misconstrue my pronunciation of rare and well because that would be like mistaking a three-syllable word for a two-syllable word.)

The accompanying side of well salted fries are different from those at Eastern Standard due to traces of papery russet skin; otherwise they're similar in cut and doneness. If you like a little skin, then Island Creek will do you right. I prefer the all-blonds next door, but the fluffy interiors and the hollow crunch of the golden ends definitely make these quality fries.

Oysters are a wonderful precursor to a burger (or to anything, really). But there is something particularly carnal about following up an elegant tray of slippery half shells with a hunk of seared beef between a soft bun. It's the kind of yin and yang balance that could form the basis of a revolutionary new diet philosophy.