Burger Friday: Proper at Finn Hall

As Liquidation Thursday wore on, I thought a burger and fries might ease me of my economic anxiety. So I headed downtown in late afternoon to check out the latest in Houston smashburgerdom, namely Proper - A Burger Spot, which recently opened in the food hall they are now marketing as "The Finn."

That mini-hyphen thingy seems to be part of the burger kiosk's official name, possibly to distinguish it from a couple of other American burger ventures that use the "proper" designation.

I dunno about the "retro vibes" the business is touting—maybe it's about the tubful of old-fashioned bottled sodas on ice, or the burger's yellow-and-white checked paper wrappers—but I do know about the burgers proper.

Come along and take a bite:

Price: $14.95 for the Bacon Blue Cheese smashburger (they're all doubles, and the basic cheeseburger goes for $10.95); $5 for beef fat fries. Add a bottle of IBC root beer, tax and tip, and you're cruising toward 30 bucks. That's 2025 for you.

Ordering: Line up at the counter to tap in your choices on the touchscreen system and pay with plastic. They'll call your name (or your cell phone) when it's ready for you to collect. Then find a seat in the hall at a table or window counter; or outside on a narrow astroturfed patio overlooking the Main Street train tracks.

Architecture: Salad stuff—just a scatter of "shrettuce," as they bill it—on top. On a griddled potato bun goes the first skinny smashed patty that's about 1/4 inch thick, followed by a wash of blue cheese ranch dressing with actual nubbins of blue cheese scattered through. Another beef patty follows, generously sluiced with—I swear to you—"A1 bone marrow Demi." (As in the concentrated brown demi-glace sauce used in classical French cooking, cut with plenty of A1 steak sauce.) Sturdy Nueske's bacon strips crisscross on top, and then comes the insignificant smatter of shrettuce, mere squiggles on the meaty canvas.

Quality: Likable if perplexing, this burger needed a better sweet/savory balance. And if only the smashy frizzled edges had protruded beyond the bun rim, it would have looked more festive. Even after I moved it around in its wrapper for a better shot, my burger looked far more polite than the one pictured in glamorous portrait mode on Proper's Instagram page.

The beef flavor from the crusty patties was stout; I could hear the griddle sizzling and popping with beef fat from 20 feet away. The Nueske's bacon was brawny stuff, too: thick, smoky, salty. But the pungent boost of blue cheese I craved got trounced by a thick demi-glace of jammy sweetness.

Yes, A1 sauce traditionally contains sweet elements—everything from raisins to corn syrup, marmalade to sugar to tomato puree. Proper's demiglace version could have been fun had there been half as much of it, and twice as much blue cheese. After all, people who order blue cheese burgers tend to REALLY like blue cheese. The cheese needs to kick butt, not simper around shyly.

The bottom bun had been griddled to just short of burnt, but it squashed down so much as I ate it scarcely mattered. More of a ding than a dent.

Ooze rating: quite decent. Some was condiment based, but meat juices sneaked through, too.

Letter grade: B plus. Might have been higher had the sweet/savory balance been better and the bottom bun unscorched.

Bonus points: I arrived just as a shift was changing, and the fellows on duty were all-around delightful. They kinda made my day. The griddle guy showed me how to work the ordering touchscreen with patient good humor. His colleague was packing up a backpack bristling with lethal looking tools, and when I expressed interest, he gave me a guided tour of his Japanese knives and whatnot. He walks around with 30 pounds of that equipment strapped to his shoulders. I bow down.

Minus points: The beef-fat fries sounded promising—everything's coming up beef tallow now that RFK Jr. has taken over—but I found them merely okay. They were big, squared bruisers verging toward steak-fry territory. They were crisp unto crustiness. But they had that dull, uniformly fluffy interior texture that I associate with frozen potatoes. I ate a few and stopped.

Local color: The varied life of downtown Houston swirls outside and in here. I got to chat with a charming, dreadlocked young man in a Metro vest, who popped in at 5 to place his order. He joshed with the staffers, who greeted him like a regular, and then attacked the touchscreen with a flourish I could only envy. Our topics of conversation included custom-made Viking swords and (suitable for the day) the stupefying prices people were willing to pay for niche-interest items.

Afterwards, I strolled down the block, sniffing the familiar downtown eau de vie of sewerage cut with fermented grease trap, to visit the ornate embellishments on the JP Morgan Chase Bank portal. I love that thing.

Take a stroll down the block to visit the magnificent JP Morgan Chase niche. They don't build 'em like that anymore.