You wouldn’t think there was much room for variation in creating a hamburger—a ground beef patty on a bun with some ketchup, cheese, veggies and maybe some bacon.
The ones my family makes at home on the grill are pretty good: thick, with the blue cheese sometimes cooked right into the middle of the burger. My wife also makes a great one with hamburger and onions marinated in red wine. Often when I dine out at a place I’m a little dubious of, I’ll order a burger with mushrooms, bacon and cheese, and usually the results will satisfy. And, hell, I’ll still occasionally grab a McDouble from the drive-thru for a buck and revel in the juicy, cheesy beefiness as I pull into traffic, the wrapper in my lap.
But the burgers made at Local in Northampton, on the corner of Main Street and Strong Avenue, are a whole new paradigm. After a lifetime of snarfing down beef patties encased in buns, these burgers give me pause and cause to rejoice.
Much of Local’s success comes from the guiding principle their name implies: whenever possible, their ingredients come from nearby farms. Much of their beef comes from humanely treated cows in Easthampton and Brimfield, and whether the beef is grass-fed or dry-aged (weekends only), the taste is more succulent and palate-embracing than you’re likely to get from plastic-wrapped beef from a supermarket chain. While it may do your guilty conscience good to know the cow you’re eating didn’t spend its life pumped up on antibiotics and eating chemically prepared grain to make it fat, it’s the flavor of these grass-fed, free-range cows—not moral absolution—that will get you blathering to your out-of-town friends about the place they just have to try.
By default, Local offers their burgers up plain, with the customer only having to decide between “pink or not pink” as their cooking options. Alone, with only the bun to keep it company, the burger’s taste is magnificent, but adding lettuce, tomato, pickles, onion and condiments to your preference only improves things. They also have a hearty selection of extras (applewood bacon, three cheeses, saut?ed onions or mushrooms, roasted red peppers, grilled chiles and sauerkraut) that allow you to customize your burger to personal perfection.
Typically, I order the six-ounce Westhampton Burger, which includes bacon, cheddar cheese, BBQ sauce and ranch dressing with all the veggies ($6.89), and this serves very nicely as the cornerstone of a meal, whether it’s lunch or dinner. Even though their signature 12-ounce “Local” Burger (cheddar, bacon, mushroom, onion and red peppers for $9.99) is damn fine, it also eclipses any desire for their second best reason for success: their list of sides.
Take your pick. Each side is more scrumptious than the last: French fries, sweet potato fries, beer-battered onion rings, fried pickles, a pound of wings or Captain Crunch-encrusted chicken tenders. Their fries are easily the best in the Pioneer Valley, but I’ve made a habit of ordering the fried pickles with ranch dressing, prepared from a house recipe which is like nothing I’ve had anywhere else—not as much sour as saturated with a mix of smoky fried batter and sweet cucumber flavor. Every time I see the onion rings served, though, I think I ought to give them a try—huge wheels of bountifully battered onion goodness stacked so high. (All fried foods at Local are cooked in 100 percent cholesterol-free peanut oil.)
The vegetarian offerings are also delicious. I have not tried their veggie burger, but the Portobello-based sandwich they dub the “Amherst Burger” includes roasted red peppers and crumbled blue cheese ($5.99), and it’s full of satisfying, rich, tangy flavor. It’s not merely a hamburger forgery, but something to be enjoyed on its own merits and with ample sides.
As edifying and worthy of celebration as the food at Local is, the establishment has been open barely 18 months, and sometimes its excellence and popularity threaten to endanger its laid-back ambiance.
Customers order their meals from the guy at the register and then take a seat, waiting for their number to be called and their food to be brought to them. This dynamic means that the savvy repeat customers will first claim a seat and then order. If it’s particularly busy, this can leave the non-savvy, first-time customers adrift in the restaurant, wondering if there will be a place available to sit when their food is ready.
Even worse, one Friday night my family waited dutifully in the line that went out the door for nearly half an hour, only to be told, as we finally approached the register, that the kitchen had closed until such time as they could catch up, and that they would not take our order until then. Even on less busy occasions, I’ve found myself (after a 10-minute wait) standing in front of the single person at the counter while he takes a call from someone with a to-go order who hasn’t waited more than five seconds.
To avoid these ire-inducing scenarios, I recommend trying the burger joint for lunch a little before or after the noontime rush. For dinner, give it a go Sunday through Thursday, but avoid the Friday-Saturday evening feeding frenzy. (On weekends, Local is open until three a.m. to accommodate the post-concert, after-bar-hours crowd.)
Despite these occasional inconveniencies, it should be noted that dozens of appetites deciding concurrently that a burger and fries from Local is the only thing that will suffice should reflect positively on the establishment.
In addition to Local’s honed menu, it has plenty of sodas and juices on hand to quench thirst, but it also has a BYOB policy, which works well with Pop’s Package store up the street, just beyond the train and rail trail overpasses. Many diners will work on a six-pack as they wait for their food.
The only conceivable improvement I can come up with for Local is some kind of amnesty agreement between Local and the Dirty Truth, the eminent draught beer bar just a crosswalk away. Ideally, I’d like to see a burger and beer zone created where beef sandwiches and pint glasses would be permitted to cross Main Street as long as their final destination was either one of these fine establishments. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I bet I’m not the only one.”
