Trapped in a Museum with Overpriced Food

On a recent trip to the Udvar-Hazy Center, the Virginia annex for the Smithsonian Air and Space museum which is the home to the space shuttle Discovery (seriously, this museum is so good and you should check it out if you get the chance), I had the opportunity, with my group, to stop for lunch at the Shake Shack within. This is the only restaurant option in the museum and while we could have left and gone somewhere else (we were in Northern Virginia and there’s restaurants everywhere), we elected to eat here. One, because we were lazy, but also because it’s Shake Shack and everyone that has eaten at one of these places swears by them. They’re a Californian burger staple. So with one right in our grasp, how could we say no?

We got in line (which took twenty minutes to get through, mind you), got our selections of food items, and sat down to share things around and see how we felt about Shake Shack, using this place as our entry into the restaurant. And, overall, it was fine. I’ll spoil that now. The various items ranged from decent to good, with everything feeling competent and edible. None of it really wowed me, and even if we hadn’t overpaid for the meal because we were in a museum and they could overcharge us for everything, I still would have probably come away feeling like it was fine but not worth the price. With museum markup, it was a shockingly mediocre experience.

Single SmokeShack

Our meal consisted of three burgers, along with sides and desserts, so that we could try a variety and feel like we got the full experience. The first of the sandwiches was the SmokeShack, which we got in its single (not double or triple) form. The burger is made of a quarter pound of 100% Angus beef, topped with American cheese, applewood-smoked bacon, chopped cherry peppers, and ShackSauce, and served on a toasted potato bun. It was a perfectly fine, competent burger that did show the restaurant at least knew how to cook a burger well. Overall it might have been the best item we got on the menu.

The burger was well cooked, smash style, and only a little greasy. The overall flavor was pretty solid, smoky, salty, and sharp, but the outstanding ingredient on the burger was absolutely the cherry peppers. These little chopped, pickled guys packed a lot of heat and dominated the whole experience. I enjoyed it, as they blended well with the cheese and burger meat, but there’s no doubt that they also drowned out some other ingredients. I barely noticed the bacon on the burger at all, and the signature sauce acted mostly like mayo with so many other dominant flavors at play. It was very good, but not so good that I was sitting there going, “man, this is a burger.” It was just good.

‘Shroom Burger

Our original plan was to get the seasonal barbeque pork rib sandwich that we saw on the main Shake Shack website, but this smaller location didn’t have that item. So instead, as a way to avoid getting too many similar items, we went with a mushroom burger instead. This ‘Shroom sandwich is composed of a crisp-fried portobello mushroom filled with melted muenster and cheddar cheeses, topped with lettuce, tomato, and ShackSauce on a toasted potato bun. It was, again, a sandwich I liked, but not without a whole lot of caveats included.

The best part was the mushroom itself, which had a solid, earthy flavor but, somehow, was super crunchy on the outside from the frying. Normally a fried mushroom only stays crunchy for a few seconds before getting soggy, but this one had a nice, brittle crunch on the outside that lasted. It was tasty and delicious, and I could eat more mushrooms like this if they had this crunch. That said, the mushroom was basically the only good item in the sandwich. The sauce was, again, barely noticeable, and despite the menu saying this mushroom is stuffed with cheese, I didn’t notice the cheeses at all. It tasted like a well made, competent mushroom on a bun, and while that was good, it again lacked any kind of wow factor.

Avocado Bacon Chicken

The weakest of the three items was another seasonal option, Shake Shack’s crispy fried chicken topped with sliced avocado and applewood smoked bacon, and it just was not good. The sandwich comes with pickles and sauce as well, all on a toasted potato bun, but the overall composition left a lot to be desired. This wasn’t just a mediocre chicken in general, this one one of the most boring chicken sandwiches I’ve ever experienced.

The best part was the chicken, and even that wasn’t that great. It was a very basic lump of fried chicken in the middle of the sandwich. The meat was crispy and salty, but it didn’t really have enough flavors to it. It lacked a nice seasoning blend to make the crunchy coating munchable. But then, when you put the avocado and bacon on it, everything got lost. Nothing tasted good, and it all blended together to be far less than the sum of its parts. It tasted like almost nothing, sitting on a bland bun. I wouldn’t call it outright gross, but it was a completely uninteresting sandwich.

Black and White Shake

Along with our meal we also got shakes, and I sample the Black and White. Chocolate and vanilla, blended together. It was pretty decent, not too sweet but very thick, and I found it pretty enjoyable. The only critique I would have is that it was just a blended shake, a light brown slurry in a cup. If you were to get this from any other shakes and burgers place, like a Steak ‘n Shake, they would swirl it, or layer it, or do something to make the black and white parts stand out. This was probably the least interesting presentation they could do for it, two flavors carelessly blended in a pitcher and then poured. I wish there had been anything more to it.

Constellation Concrete

The final item we ordered was the special Constellation Concrete. This is an exclusive item for the museum, and it’s built off the Shake Shack favor sundae style, their Concrete. This type had your choice of either chocolate or vanilla frozen custard (we went with vanilla) topped with hot fudge, brownie bits, chips, sprinkles, popping candy, and just about every other chocolate item you could think of. It was, to be blunt, a lot of chocolate. Far too much for an enjoyable sundae.

The dessert lacked focus. This was a kitchen sink item, something where they threw every topping onto it without trying to make a real flavor. All we got out of it (and this was with a vanilla base, mind you) was chocolate. Tongue assaulting, blood sugar killing, chocolate. It was chocolate overload and none of us could even make it more than halfway into the cup before we all had to call it quits.

And I also have to note that by the time it got to us (and I was standing by the window, waiting) the ice cream was already half melted. I don’t know what order they put everything together in, but clearly they made the concrete before everything else was ready, and it was less firm custard (less concrete, if we follow their logic) than a sad cup of ice cream soup.

Final Thoughts

I don’t want to ding the chain too much because this is obviously a tiny extension franchise run out of a museum with a limited menu and only so much they could do during a busy lunch period. I’m trying to be kind by saying this was a decent enough meal, if not outstanding, when in reality I thought it was generally quite bad and absolutely not worth the price. It barely filled me up, left me underwhelmed, and cost me over $70 for the experience. It was bad.

I feel like I’ll have to try another Shake Shack again, at some point, because this experience left me cold. There were a couple of items that intrigued me, like the SmokeShack, and I think in the right setting, with a version of the restaurant that wasn’t in a food court setting, maybe it could be better. But if it’s the same food there (and worse, the same price) then I’m not going to have anything kind to say. This wasn’t a good meal, and for the price, and how much people talk up this chain online, I expected better.