I love it when new restaurants come in embracing dining trends and doing it well: craft burgers + craft beer (an entire page of drafts sourced exclusively from New England… I didn’t even know there was a Thimble Islands brewery!) executed flawlessly.
Haywire Burger Bar does so many things right it is no wonder Aunt Judy and I found the dining room and patio absolutely packed. Despite so many older restaurants offering hamburgers along the Connecticut shore, Haywire Burger Bar’s success gives the impression that the local burger market was underserved before they arrived!
Where Haywire Burger Bar nails it is with consistency. It was genius to step away from the full steak temp scale (Blue, Rare, Medium-Rare, Medium, Medium Well, Well, Char, Etc…) towards a binary choice: Pink or Not Pink. I’m just another dirty old man from a big filthy city but I did feel slightly uncomfortable saying to our beautiful young female server, who couldn’t have been far out of high school, that I wanted the pink meat.
“Pink or not pink?” she asked innocently.
“Pink,” I grunted, sounding like Mr. Creosote from The Meaning of Life.
My burger was perfect: juicy and pink, steaming hot interior, while the patty’s exterior was charred and slightly smoky. The fries were thin cut and well seasoned. The vanilla shake arrived only a couple minutes after I ordered it, and was the perfect sweet companion to the salty fries.
How often do you order a milkshake and have to wait 20 minutes for it to arrive? Milkshake’s take time: when it gets super slammed, I bet that milkshake maker goes to war. Give that guy or gal a raise.
Haywire’s got one of the best burgers on the Connecticut shore!
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