PrintShacktober Fest: A Frank Appraisal
Here at SE:NY we don't mess around. As soon as we heard about Shake Shack's Shacktober Fest, we descended en masse to taste test every item on the Shacktober Fest menu. It is indeed a tough job, but someone has to do it—and since we consider it our mission to lead you to everything delicious in New York, that someone happened to be us.
Our order that cloudy Monday:
1 Bratwurst with cranberry horseradish relish
1 Andouille Sausage with braised red cabbage
1 Polish Sausage with celery root slaw
1 Cran-Apple Strudel Concrete
1 German Chocolate Cake Concrete
1 Apple Honey Cake Concrete (it was the concrete of the day)
2 pints of the pumpkin spice custard
An order of spicy mustard (it's only .25)
The verdict after the jump:
The Andouille Sausage is meaty and is spicy enough (at least for me), and the braised red cabbage works really well as a topping.
The Polish Sausage is nice and juicy, and with the celeriac slaw and the mustard, makes a fine tubesteak lunch.
The Sheboygan-style Beer-Soaked bratwurst leaves a great deal to be desired. It was devoid of flavor and had an unappealing (too finely ground) texture. There were flecks of black pepper throughout, but for some reason even they added no discernible taste. The cranberry horseradish relish completely overwhelmed the brat.
From left to right: German chocolate, cran-apple strudel, and apple honey cake.
The German chocolate cake concrete was a knockout: very chocolaty, extremely creamy, and was mercifully not too sweet.
The cran-apple strudel concrete could have used a little more cranberry and a bit more strudel-y crunch, but overall was a fine concrete specimen.
The apple honey cake concrete, perhaps an ode to Danny Meyer's Jewish grandmother, was perfectly fine, but not all that inspiring. It didn't have a pronounced honey flavor, and the apples were a little too sweet.
The pumpkin spice custard was intensely pumpkin-y. If you are a fan of pumpkin desserts you will love it. I really liked it, but I felt myself longing for a pumpkin pie concrete, a Shake Shack invention I fell in love with a couple of years ago. I'm sure that particular concrete will find its way to the Shacktober fest menu sometime between now and the 17th of October, when Shacktober fest ends.
So go to Shacktober Fest, have the andouille or the Polish sausage with the shack-made slaws, spend the extra .25 for the spicy mustard, and wash them down with the German Chocolate Cake concrete. Or wash them down with one of the specialty beers and have some pumpkin custard for dessert (you have to go on a Monday for that). And if they happen to bring back the pumpkin pie concrete, order one. If you like pumpkin pie, you will not be disappointed.
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6 Comments:
When I was there on this past Saturday, they definitely had the Pie Oh My! concrete (pumpkin pie, vanilla custard, whipped cream) available. But there was only a single sign taped to the ordering window.
kathryn at 6:54PM on 10/09/08
A friend tell me that when she asked, they said they do Pie Oh My whenever they have pie, which apparently happens at random.
kathryn at 4:57PM on 10/16/08
sorry, but the pumpkin pie concrete is an invention of Ted Drewes', not the Shake Shack.
ivanomartin at 2:14PM on 10/20/08
And to echo ivanomartin, Shake Shack version pales in comparison. Drewes rules.
Also, bunnycrete. Sigh.
dbdtron at 4:27PM on 09/24/09
My bad on the invention front. I will say, and I know this may be painful to hear for present or past St. Louis residents, when we did a straight comparative blind taste test between Shake Shack and Ted Drewes frozen custard, Shake Shack won handily. Of course it must be said that the Ted Drewes custard was shipped and the Shake Shack custard was fresh.
Ed Levine at 4:38PM on 09/24/09
"Of course it must be said that the Ted Drewes custard was shipped and the Shake Shack custard was fresh."
Proclaiming that the Shack's custard won a taste test under those conditions would be like holding a taste test between a frozen Di Fara Pizza (shipped over dry ice) with some neopolitan pizza shop du jour in LA.
Yeah, way to go neopolitan pizza shop du jour in LA.
- Take it from someone who had Ted Drews shipped to his upstate New York wedding. The frozen hard product is no where near the quality of the custard you taste fresh out of the machine. You dont get it shipped because of the taste. Its all about nostalgia.
Can we all just agree that Meyer successfully ripped off the original and did a good job in doing so? It's not better, but its still damn good.
gabrielg54 at 5:22PM on 09/24/09