LAFAYETTE, CALIFORNIA – Take a juicy burger and slather it with cheese. Then, douse the whole thing with umami-intensive fried onions. Finally, drop it on a brioche bun and slather it with a tangy, secret sauce.
That’s the basic formula for an SOB burger, the newest addition to the menu at Local Kitchens in Lafayette, California and throughout the Bay Area.
The SOB or Sweet Onion Burger is the brainchild of celebrity chef Alvin Cailan. The idea was to create a delicious, unique burger that’s also affordable for everyday people.
To that end, Cailan partnered with Local Kitchens to roll out his new burger creation to shops around the Bay Area. Local Kitchens sent me a credit to try out the SOB burger myself, so on a busy weeknight I order several burgers, grilled cheeses, fries and cookies (we’ll get to those) from the Local Kitchens in Lafayette.
The Food
The burgers arrived quickly, and we got right to work trying them out.
The SOB burger feels fancier than your standard burger. The brioche bun adds a bit of sugary class, and the ingredients and presentation feel premium.
The burger also looks delicious—so much so that I had trouble photographing it without tiny hands intervening!
I took a bite of my SOB burger to see if it lived up to all the celebrity chef hype. It was very tasty!
The onions add a sweet, melty savoriness that’s a nice complement to the melted cheese and meat of the burger itself. They remind me of the fried onions that top cheese takes in Philly where I grew up.
Their sweetness melds well with the brioche bun, giving the overall impression of a burger that’s just a bit decadent. With the sauced amping up the flavor, too, the SOB has a lot going on.
Overall I felt like the patty itself was good, but nothing special. It felt more like a backdrop for the onions and sauce, and less like the star of the show. Thats in contrast to burgers from places like Roam, where the meat is the main focus.
That’s excusable, though, given that it indeed makes a lovely canvas for those much more flavorful additions. This is less a standalone burger, and more a carefully-calibrated flavor concept that happens to arrive in burger form.
SOB burger’s other menu items were delicious as well. My kids inhaled the French fries, and the grilled cheese was thick with tasty cheese and definitely felt different from the Kraft-singles based sandwiches you might make at home.
SOB’s menu features a unique dessert: molasses chocolate chip cookies.
Crunchy and not overly sweet, these cookies made a perfect dessert after the decadence of the burger itself.
Want to try the SOB burger? You can drop into Local Kitchens, or do what I did and get an SOB burger delivered to your table without even needing to venture outdoors.
This article is part of our Cozy at Home series, highlighting local Bay Area takeout food options for the chilly, rainy winter months. Join our free 925 News newsletter to get all our Cozy at Home picks in your inbox.
