Taste of the Town: Fast Times’s Baller Burger
Welcome to Taste of the Town, the series where we profile the best eats inside and nearby Raimondi Park.
What better way to start than the Baller Burger from Fast Times burgers in the Prescott Marketplace, the Official Smashburger of the Oakland Ballers? (Can I be the Official Smasher of Burgers for the Oakland Ballers?) Fast Times was named one of the three best smashburgers in the whole Bay by the Chronicle.
I have won many (lost count) James Beard Awards and Pulitzer Prizes for food criticism, so here’s my anointed take (and yes, we’ll do something vegetarian for next time…):
This burger is dope.
How dope? This succulent whole-hander comes in one, two, or three patty options, making it single, double, or triple-dope. The bun has just the right sweet glaze and crunch, countered by the tart pickles and lettuce, and though I’m often one to discard a tomato, it makes a fine addition here. Anyone who knows me (mostly presidents and other heads-of-state, about-to-be-huge artists, selfless philanthropists, and Scrappy) knows I’m a sucker for sauces, and the BBQ here is Tang-Tastic™.
Indeed, the progress of humanity has had its fits and starts over the millennia, but there have been few inventions better than putting bacon on a burger, and this evolution here does not disappoint. And extra kudos to whoever in history first put an onion ring in there too, very likely a man named Carl between frames at a bowling alley who just mashed all his goodies together before sticking his greasy ol’ fingers into his own ball he brought from home for league night…this person is a hero.
Also, who got the idea to take the burger—already quite swell—and smash it? Or, more aptly, to name it a smashburger and know that people would see beyond the unappealing name to its profound deliciousness? (Apparently, a cook at the Dairy Cheer restaurant in Kentucky in the 1950s? See? They don’t give me the Pulitzers for nothing…)
Indeed, the box or basket you find your burger in is the only limit to its scrumtralescence—please don’t eat them too, enswirled in your ecstasy.
Bonus: Fast Times stays open at the marketplace until 10pm on Ballers gamenights (not all the spots do), which—as I can attest—is perfect post-game, or if you want to grab a bite and watch the final out from a convenient mound of woodchips just beyond the fence in center field.
Oh, and if it could get any better, Fast Times regularly feeds the Ballers’ players after the game. As a fan, if you’re eating what the players eat, it follows that you, too, can be a professional athlete. The more burgers you eat, the better you play. That’s Science™.
@shotbyadamkg for @fasttimesburgers
This season, let me know what your ballpark favorites are, and I will lend my culinary expertise and epicurean language to their praise.
