mustard

mustard
@52 degrees in shuwaikh

what was consumed: hamburger, fries, rocket salad, crunchy shrimp, orea shake, orange fanta!

the Q8 'burger challenge continues!

in the hip "52 degrees," degrees space out in shuwaikh (i know, i went all the way out there!), mustard has the hip and cool feel of being a "pop-up" hamburger place without actually being a pop-up, from what i understand. friends and i visited mustard on a hot summer day. i had heard about the '52 degrees' space, but had not yet gone out there, so this was a double whammy of goodness.

for as hip and cool as the space supposedly is, we walked in to a virtually empty space (we met up around 7pm, so maybe business picks up later in the evening, or on the weekends?) so finding seating was pretty easy. we put in our order and waited for our (hopefully) delicious fare. i had heard that the inspiration behind mustard was the east coast chain "five guys," which i frequented while living in wdc (note: while i'm still a die-hard in 'n out fan, i am happy to see five guys have make appearances on the west coast because five guys fries >>> in 'n out fries). mustard is different from five guys - the burgers are different, the options are different, the bread is different, etc. but having five guys as the basis for your burger joint isn't a bad place to begin. and i was happy to try out the local variation.

i started out with a salad that was nicely dressed with just the right amount of dried fruit and nuts. real simple, but a good (and healthy?) start to the meal. the fries also came out at the same time (not fresh cut, but i enjoyed them anyway). i should have explicitly said that i wanted the fries with the burger (i thought that was a given, but my mistake for making that assumption). next came the crunchy shrimp. this was the one thing from our large order that we didn't finish. there was something about the shrimp that made them ... a little off. i couldn't tell what it was, but i kept trying to figure it out. maybe it's the oil the shrimp was cooked in? i dunno. finally, our burgers!

i ordered a pretty simple burger - extra lettuce, extra tomatoes, and cheese. no sauce. of course, it came with mustard (which i didn't want, but didn't mind). the bun was soft, the burger didn't come with extra veggies (sad day for me), and the patty was cooked well done (the only option) but in a pretty good way. it (the patty) could have been seasoned a bit, but it didn't matter as the flavor of mustard pretty much took over everything else. no biggie - the entirety of the burger was pretty delicious - fresh tasting and clean, more like an in 'n out style burger than five guys. i enjoyed mine and gobbled it right up. note: the burgers were accompanied by salt-pickeled cucumbers. e and i were saying that it reminded us of korean style pickles! nom nom nom ... 

the service at mustard, sadly, was below par. i don't know what's better though: the totally unavailable (and uninterested) wait staff at mustard or the overly indulgent tcn staff at other places. why can't there be a happy medium? i tried not to have this affect my thoughts on my burger, but you know how it goes. oh well.

it's also next door to chewy gooey, so be sure to pick up some cookies for me on your way out :D