Mullane's

You know what I like more than the average guy? A juicy, delicious burger. And lemme tell you, a good burger in Brooklyn is hard to find. Great, sophisticated New American cuisine? Sure. A workingman's cheeseburger? Not quite so easy. Despite its considerable charm, Bonnie's on 5th Ave. in Park Slope doesn't quite deliver for me--its burger is simply too large and charred, and usually falls apart before the consumption halfway point. DuMont Burger in Williamsburg, despite ludicrous lists like this one, I found to be overrated, delivering a slightly better than average burger in a fun. outdoor setting.

It was with great surprise and pleasure, then, that the folks over at Chowhound guided me to Mullane's on Lafayette Ave. in Fort Greene (near where my Ipod was recently stolen) for a pre-theater dinner on Saturday night. Mullane's is an Irish bar and restaurant where some of the waitstaff actually appear to be Irish. It's more suburban in its setup and execution than many Brooklyn eateries, and you know what? I like that. Sometimes I miss big, free-refillable cokes, space between tables, and TV's on in the background. Because I yearn for Chili's weekly, does that make me a bad person? I don't think so. I think it means that I want to have my burger and eat it too (I want an occasional taste of the suburbs in the city, in other words), and at Mullane's I can do that--before catching me some Chekhov (aka culture) over at BAM.

Like at Chili's, the burger at Mullane's seemed almost perfectly calibrated to my eating potential (meaning that when I was done I felt very pleasantly full). I chose the "Bamburger," which came with cheese, bacon, and mushrooms, and a pleasantly soft (but not soggy) bun. What else can I tell you other than that it was tasty and just what the doctor ordered? People on contentious message boards would probably want to shoot me for saying this, but I'd probably put this in the top niche of burgers I've eaten in New York.

Mullanes--71 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn