Now Serving: Guy Fieri's Baltimore Kitchen & Bar

I'd looked back over the last couple of weeks, and the burgers i've been consuming have been very plain. Ordinary. No attempts at reinventing the wheel. Not that they haven't been tasty, but not the frankenfood I was hoping to find.

Insert loud celebrity chef Guy Fieri. Nothing seems ordinary about this guy. Obsessed with catch phrases and excessive portions, he might be the guy to take me to "Flavortown", though google maps doesn't seem to specifically know where that is, (I don't think it's a real place, guys).

But "Guy Fieri's Baltimore Kitchen and Bar" is a real place, located inside Horseshoe casino, in the shadows of M&T Bank Stadium. And as much of a mouthful it is to say it's name, they allude to serving mouthfuls of food. On my plate today is his "Bacon Mac and Cheese Burger", which promises an "Award-winning burger – winner of the New York City Wine + Food Festival Burger Bash! Crispy applewood bacon, six-cheese mac ‘n’ cheese, LTOP (lettuce, tomato, onion + pickle), SMC (super melty cheese) + a slathering of donkey sauce on a garlic-buttered brioche bun." (As copied and pasted from the menu.) I'm glad the menu has acronyms, paired with an explination of the acronym next to it. Destroys the need for an acronym, but I would have never figured out SMC.

And while I'm super excited to have an award winning burger, the festival sounds extremely specific, and maybe a little made up. We don't have shit like that in Baltimore.

Anyhow, on to the burger, which looks like an appetizer sampler exploded and landed on top of the bun. Mine came with onion straws on top, which wasn't listed in the myriad of ingreedients. I did note an absence of the donkey sauce. Unless donkey sauce is a fancy name for ketchup, which I doubt. It's tall, but everything on the burger is compactable, making it easier to eat than first glance might tell you.

Everything on the bun is delicious. Even the stuff that eventually fell off the bun was still delicious. But all the food had a layer of grease. The burger was thin. Lots of it, but thin, making it faster to cook, and easier to cook evenly. The mac, outstanding, would make a great stand alone disk, had a layer of oil from the cheese. The onion straws, fried, so grease is just going to happen. Bacon was fantastic, but naturally greasy. A generous layer of long, thin slices of pickles on the bun, naturally a wet item. Bun was grilled, a good contrast of garlic and butter. Everything had a layer of lubrication, making it very easy to slide down my gullet. I imagine the donkey sauce if included would have added to the ease, but would have made it sloppy, which to my suprise, this burger really wasn't. Guy is doing magic in his kitchen.

Note the overhang from under the bun

It should be noted that it's 3 different styles of fries on that slide. They are very sweet, as if someone took powdered sugar, shook it on top, and dropped it into the fry vat. Seasoning fries is one thing, sugaring them is completely different. I guess if you're ordering something like this, Healthier substitutions are laughable. But I'm a fan. My only gripe is you have to traverse the casino, ascend the parking garage, walk through the casino, go down the escalator, turn around, walk past more slots, do the hokey pokey,.. it's a lot to get to the restaurant. And it's a shame none of the under 21 crowd will get to eat there either.

Oh, and happy holidays. May you get lots of burgers under your tree, and sliders in your stockings.