Smashburger

187 Columbia Turnpike
Florham Park, NJ 07932
www.smashburger.com

Smashburger. It sounds great already.

The Place – Smashburger is a chain of fast casual burger restaurants that try their best to be the local burger joint. While Smashburger does have restaurants in other states, they’ve only got a few locations in New Jersey. This is good, because it means I can write a review of them with out breaking my own rules. The restaurant itself is obviously professionally designed, and has a modern style to it, even if it feels a bit corporately created and canned.




The sides – The Regular fries are good, but the sage seasoned fries are better. They also offer sweet potato fries, if you’d prefer.

Fried pickles. They’re on the menu and they’re tasty. They’re just little sliced pickles that are fried, but I like these way more than regular pickles.

The service – was better than most places. In fact, they were very friendly, and someone actually came to our table and asked us how we were doing and if we needed anything. That never happens in a place without waiters and waitresses.



The burgers – are great. They’ve got big Meaty Angus beef patties that are so big they barely fit on the delicious egg buns. You can pretty much make your own Smashburger, as they give you a lot of choices among the different types of Cheeses (American, swiss, cheddar, blue), sauces (ranch, mayo, spicy brown mustard, special smash sauce), fixings (too many to list) and even a choice of buns (egg, multi-grain, onion, or no bun at all).



The Local Burgers – Smashburger models their business on trying to be the ‘home town’ burger place of choice, no matter which state or town your in. So, yes, Louisana gets a Cajun Spiced burger, Idado gets potato chips on their beef, and Northern California gets a garishly pretentious burger with brie cheese and balsamic marinated tomatoes.

Its a good that Smashburger knows that somethings sell better in different regional markets, because if you tried to bring a burger like the California ‘Pinkies up’ special in New Jersey, you’d probably get punched in the mouth.

So in New Jersey, we get two special burgers: One I ordered and one I didn’t.

The New Jersey Smashburger has bacon, blue cheese, onions, lettuce tomato and mayo on an onion bun. I didn’t order this because I have no idea how this is inspired by or has anything to do with New Jersey. Maybe its because we’re the Garden State and they put a garden’s worth of veggies on it? Seems like a stretch.



For the other choice, Smashburger decided to honor New Jerseyan diner culture with a special burger. The Taylor Ham, Egg and Cheese Burger is a total a home run. Eating this was like being served a diner breakfast on a burger. Its got a really great, rich taste from a combination that you’d never think to put on a burger on your own. They even correctly identified it as Taylor Ham instead of a Pork Roll (thank you for doing your research). The best compliment that I can give Smashburger is that this burger tastes like home.



All in all, I love choices. I like big menus with lots of different burgers and options for toppings.

For this review, I visited the Florham Park location, but there are Smashburgers already in or opening soon in Hackensack, Montclair, Clifton and New Providence as well. I’d bet money that they’re all good.