The Cut Handcrafted Burger

I went to The Cut on a weekday for lunch, looking for a place to enjoy the sunny California weather and have good food. The Cut is a small restaurant in Westpark Plaza in Irvine with a cozy, inviting vibe. The restaurant features a patio and tall windows that are often left wide open, connecting the restaurant to the patio. Although reservations are possible, they are often not necessary. Especially during the week, it is relatively easy to snag a table either inside or outside without too much difficulty. However during the weekend, reservations are recommended. With only about three other parties in the restaurant, we were allowed to sit anywhere. The main focus of The Cut is the burger. All burgers are served with the same grass-fed beef patty on a potato bun, and all come without sides except for the 40 dollar dry-aged namesake burger. And with the exception of this specialty burger, all of them appear to be reasonably priced. The simplest burger is 14 dollars, while the most expensive is 22. However, I was annoyed to see that fries had to be ordered separately and were also eight dollars. And looking at pictures of the fries, the portion you get for eight dollars is really not that much. The burgers themselves have a lot of adventurous options. Of the nine burgers, all feature a different type of cheese, yet many are composed in a very similar way. There is a clear emphasis on balanced flavors. The burger that stood out the most to me was The Colombian: smoked mozzarella, cilantro chimichurri, and roasted bananas. I have never seen a burger like this before. Specifically, the choice of adding bananas to a burger threw me off, which is ultimately what made me decide to order it. For being one of the few parties in the restaurant, I was surprised to see how long it took to receive our food. It took about thirty minutes. Service in general was a little lackluster. Our water glasses were often empty with no carafe at the table, and it wasn't easy to get anyone's attention. Our server didn't check on us often. He was spending time out of sight in the back or talking to the bartender for a lot of our meal. When our food eventually did come, I found that the burger was smaller than I expected. At 16 dollars, this was not the worst portion, but I thought it could have been a little bigger. My first bite into the burger was extremely confusing to me. The mushy texture of the roasted banana threw me off quite a bit. Not only this, but I found the banana to be distractingly sweet. Bananas are already sweet, but roasting them brings out intensified sweetness and flavor by caramelizing the natural sugars. For me, this was really hard to look past. The cilantro chimichurri was completely overpowered and barely came through compared to the sweetness of the bananas. I understood the concept and the attempt to balance out these contrasting flavors, but it didn't really work for me. I also found that the burger was not hot. Given how long we waited, I assume the burger was given plenty of time to rest. But even so, it should at least be warm when served. The patty was fine. The waiter recommended the burger cooked medium, which was what I went with, and it came out medium. However, it was a pretty small patty, so it wasn't extremely juicy or flavorful. The bun was good. It maintained structure and texture well while also being perfectly crispy on the edges and fluffy on the inside. Overall, the burger wasn't terrible, but a few things really put me off and made for a mediocre experience. The burger not being hot was a problem for me, and the bananas resulted in a bizarre texture and an overwhelming sweetness that was hard to look past. With the service not being great and the burger being underwhelming, I struggle to recommend The Cut. I acknowledge that the restaurant was definitely understaffed, but it really felt more like our server was bored and not tending to us rather than having a lack of help. The restaurant is clean and is a nice place to enjoy the sun, but all other aspects of my experience left a lot to be desired.