Bacon Coma at Slater's 50/50

Slater's 50/50

17071 Beach Blvd. 

Huntington Beach, CA 92647

My love for Slater's 50/50 is probably well known to almost anyone that reads this blog, checks out our Facebook page, or reads our Twitter posts. I usually always try to inform people about the latest happenings from the home of the 50 percent ground beef, 50 percent ground bacon restaurant. Writing this blog, we do not often try too many restaurants twice, or even more than that, but Slater's is in a fairly consistent rotation of places we frequent.

Why do we go to Slater's so often? Well, I am not going to tell you that Slater's is the best burger I have ever had. I am not even going to tell you that Slater's is the best burger we have in OC today. One reason we keep coming here is that they are always adding new things to their menu. They almost always hook me with their burger of the month. This was the case, for our July visit. Also, we had not reviewed their Huntington Beach location, so of course, that was more than enough reason to head on over to HB.

For the three of you out there that do not know about Slater's 50/50, here is a brief history for you. This restaurant is the concept of owner, Scott Slater. An avid San Diego Chargers fan, he was tailgating with his buddies when the idea of bacon and ground beef patty came into the conversation. He toyed with the idea for a while, then in 2009, he teamed up with Executive Chef Brad Lyons to open up their first location in Anaheim Hills. This restaurant rocked the OC food scene and brought lots of people to this out of the way shopping center. Two years later they opened another location in HB, with a San Diego spot quickly following. Today they are expanding yet again, with the announcement of a new location in Pasadena.

Slater's offers customers the choice of creating your own burger, off of a checklist of almost anything you could imagine on a burger. They offer a choice of 5 kinds of breads, 20  sauces, 30 toppings, and 12 kinds of cheese. The combinations are nearly endless. Not in the mood for their signature 50/50 patty? They also offer six other kinds of meat to stuff between the buns. For those of you that have a hard time making decisions, Slater's has 10 already designed burgers, and other sandwiches and salads. I had no indecision on this visit. I knew what I was coming here for. So let's get right t the food.

I am always a fan of dips, and the Slater's Vampire Dip ($8.95) never disappoints. This garlic, cheese, and artichoke dip is served in a sourdough bread bowl, along with fried pita chips. This is a very rich appetizer that you will want to share with friends. The dip is best with the bread bowl I think. Always a great choice to start with.

As much as I like the Vampire Dip and the burgers at Slater's, I have never been too excited by the appetizers. One good thing about them is Slater's offers you a sampling of any number of them that you want. We went with the Pick Three ($6.95), which gave us our choice of three. We selected the Panko Fried Mac N' Cheese, Sweet Potato Fries, and Beer Battered Onion Straws. The best of the bunch was the fried mac n' cheese served with a Tapatio ranch. How could fried macaroni and cheese ever be a bad idea? Sweet potato fries are not really my thing, but the pumpkin sauce served with these made them bearable to me. The onion strings were very light, but I could not get a good taste of the onion here. The breading also broke away from the onion to easily. With the appetizers done, it was time for the burgers.

Okay not a burger, but Katie proves that you do not have to eat 4000 calorie burgers when you come to Slater's. She went with a Chicken Sandwich ($8.95). She added avocado, garlic aioli, onion, spring lettuce, tomato, and asparagus to this sandwich. As for the bread option she had them put it on a ciabatta roll. The highlight of this sandwich for her was the chicken, which she called well cooked, and the asparagus that she claimed was very fresh and added a good flavor to this sandwich. Katie was not too excited by her choice of the ciabatta roll here, because it was too much with all of these toppings. She also will forgo the garlic aioli in favor of the pesto aioli next time, because the garlic aioli really overpowered the sandwich.

Most of the time people tell me I overdo it and I shrug them off. On this trip, even I knew I should not have done this! What you see here is the burger of the month for July, The 'Merica Burger ($14.95). This burger was a 100% bacon patty, with a sunny side up egg, two strips of bacon, bacon island dressing, and bacon cheddar cheese. Talk about bacon overload! To make matters even worse, I let the waiter talk me into getting the pound size of this burger because he had not seen anyone order it and finish it. Man, I am a sucker! After the first bite, I was in bacon heaven. Bacon flooded all of my taste buds. As I ate this burger though, the bacon really became too much. There was nothing to cut the bacon taste other than the egg, and that was too tough of a job for this poor egg. I could literally feel the bacon course through my veins the next few days after eating this. Yes, I finished this burger, to the great amazement of my table mates, the waiter, and curious onlookers, but I will never do it again.

After a little snafu with her burger, Kat got her Build Your Own Burger ($11.95), almost when I was done with mine. She got the two-thirds pound all bacon patty but managed to only eat less than half of it. She filled up on the next item I will show you. She got this burger with Swiss cheese, baconnaise, pastrami, more bacon, tomato, onion, and vampire dip. I have never seen Kat not finish anything, so Slater's totally conquered her.

Just in case we were not going to have enough bacon, Kat ordered the Maple Bacon Shake ($5.45). This shake really tasted more like a vanilla shake with bacon bits added. We only got the bacon flavor when we sucked up a piece of bacon, which by the end of our bacon odyssey, was a nice change of pace.

This trip to Slater's was not the best I have had. I guess you can say that I overindulged to the highest degree. I will not make that mistake again. The HB location seems a little bigger than the Anaheim Hills location. We still had about a fifteen-minute wait at 4 o'clock on a Sunday afternoon. The service was as good as we have always gotten at Slater's. All of the workers really seem like they are having a good time here. I understand that Slater's is not for everyone, but I really like it. It could probably be classified as the ultimate in, "guys food". Not something I would eat every day, but even after my experience here, they already got my attention with their next burger of the month. I am not going for the full pound though

Out of five Porky Pigs, (because I felt like I ate five pigs on this trip to Slater's), five being best to zero being worst, Slater's 50/50 gets 3 Porky Pigs.

For all things, Slater's 50/50, check out their web site here: http://www.slaters5050.com/