While Wahlburgers--a burger joint in Hingham, Mass., from Alma Nove chef Paul Wahlberg, brothers Donny and Mark Wahlberg, and family friend Ed St. Croix--has been open for a while now, we finally made it out to the Hingham Shipyard to check it out just a few weeks ago.
The setup of the restaurant is a little strange. When you walk in, you can get in line to the left and wait for a table with waiter service, or you can head to the right and order at the counter. The seats on the left are community tables (and there's also bar seating), while the seats to the right are individual tables and booths. It would make more sense to me to have community tables where people order at the counter and individual tables where people are being waited on.
We ended up waiting to the left and were soon seated at a large table with other diners. There were definitely a lot of kids on the left side of the restaurant. I wouldn't have thought of it as family-friendly, since that's where the bar is too. (Maybe it's just like that at lunchtime?)
At any rate, we settled in and looked over the menu. I immediately knew that I wanted to try the melt: a 5-ounce burger served between slices of thick-cut bread and grilled with government cheese, pickles, caramelized onions, bacon, and mustard sauce. It had everything on it that I would have chosen had I created my own burger. And it was the best aspects of a burger and a grilled cheese sandwich rolled into one: crispy grilled bread, oozing cheese, and seasoned meat.
Jeff ordered the double decker with cheddar and bacon. The double decker comes with two 3-ounce burgers and can be topped however you want. (And though the burgers usually come with lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions, and Wahl sauce, Jeff always asks that the extras be held back.)
And we had to share some sides. The tater tots were a safe choice. Hot, crispy, salty--"just like you remember them," according to the menu.
And I'm a huge fan of onion strings (not rings), so when I see them on a menu, I like to order them. And it wasn't hard to convince Jeff we needed to try them. We found them well seasoned and light but not greasy. Our waitress brought us some Wahl sauce on the side, so we could dip our tots and onion strings in it if we wanted.
Overall we enjoyed the food at Wahlburgers, but I wasn't a huge fan of the atmosphere. I would much rather go to Alma Nove... or just grab some burgers to go.
Have you been to Wahlburgers?