Critic's Review
The plan today was to try the new breakfast place, but when I got there I was more in the mood for cheese fries. My first visit to this place was surprisingly disappointing, so I decided to try again.
At 2p there were some people here, but not as many as it appeared. These 3 girls took forever to order; asking a million questions, requesting something customized; with only 1 register open. Then after all this time, the 2 dudes in front of me hadn't even looked at the menu. "What kind of cheese options do you have"? Its Cheese. This isn't Capital Grille. It's yellow.
I myself ordered in a NY minute, knowing exactly what I wanted. "Single Shackburger, Cheese Fries and a small Ice Tea". I got a cup and off I went.
They have a shack in the shack here; this is where the cooking happens:
Iced tea blows here; tastes bad, no lemon and because they sell lemonade, theres no lemony option for soda. But I didn't want to pay $2.50 for a water.
You sit and you wait for the beeper to go off. We've seen this movie before.
Shake Shake's description of this location:
Whats shakin, Fort Lauderdale?! Located at 2400 N Federal Hwy, the Fort Lauderdale Shack features an outdoor patio where guests can wash their burgers down with local brews
But there's no outside space here. There's a slab in the front with no seating:
And a sad little slab with a ceiling fan and no seating to the North.
Not sure what happened but they need to update the description.
I think they're missing their expectations here in terms of crowds. It's still very weak.
Music isn't as good as on my first visit, with "Fire" mixed in with "Charlemagne". Whatever they're trying, it's not working. The staff here is your typical fast food crew and the place just feels like a fast food joint.
Finally the beeper goes off. The tray they gave me had a cup with iced tea; like they didn't know I already had a cup? Do they think I've been sitting around for 10 minutes with no drink?
A small burger with cheese fries. I opened my burger to see what was inside.
Ripe smallish tomatoes, but the lettuce is embarrassing.
The burger was hot this time, and actually pretty good. I took off the sad piece of lettuce.
The fries are addictive; the cheese sauce is very good and even though the fries weren't particularly crispy, I enjoyed them. It was the reason I came in.
I didn't intend to eat the whole thing but I pretty much did. Note that as Shake Shack food cools, it becomes inedible. You really need the little wooden fork they give you because the cheese solidifies pretty quickly. I wouldn't do these fries for take out.
All in all, a much better experience than my first visit.
Conclusion
I'm surprised that a fairly new expansion opened so poorly, but there's something wrong with this store. While most restaurants tail off over time as they shrink ingredients to pinch pennies, but you have to be good when you open to build a following. These place started cutting back on the product on opening week; and the lack of crowds show that it hasn't been well received.
Still a better option than other local lunch haunts; just eat in because the food doesn't hold up well when it cools.
Review 10/9/18
Shake Shack is open in the location previously occupied by Spring Chicken. What's surprising is that nobody seems to care. When I went to the Boca Location on opening week, the line was out the door. No line out the door here.
Not only no line out the door, but at 2:25p there was no line at all.
I've already tried most of the menu items at the Boca Location; my main target today was a black-and-white shake. Shake Shack burgers don't come with onions and I generally don't want lettuce on my burger, so I ordered a single burger with tomatoes, pickles and onions just so I had something to nosh on with my shake.
They've built a very nice, and very large, store here, with lots of big TVs and fast casual style seating. They claim to have an outdoor patio, but I didn't find any tables or chairs in an outside space.
Alex Winston and "Sea Creatures" blared quite loudly on the sound system. They give you a beeper and you wait; you can see that BurgerFi is a Chinese copy of this place.
After a few minutes my beeper went off and I went to the window to get my food. But there was no trace on the counter. "It's not ready yet, please step away from the window". Ok, so why did my beeper go off if the food isn't ready, babe? I had to wait there for 5 minutes before my food was ready. I asked why my beeper went off if the food wasn't ready. "The onions held it up".
OK.
I know better than to order an iced tea at Shake Shack; no fresh lemon here.
At first glance the burger didn't look very fresh and juicy.
At second glance, this was an old, dried out burger. I'd hoped for some nice red onion, or maybe just not an onion that looked like it was sliced with a hatchet. Decent tomatoes.
This burger was junk; this is what I'd expect to get at Burger King. No wonder the place was dead empty. This is embarrassing food to serve on opening week. Don't they have corporate people monitoring the kitchen when a place first opens?
The shake was equally disappointing. A black and white shake is NOT a mix of vanilla and chocolate ice cream; it's a vanilla shake mixed with chocolate syrup. There was no hint of chocolate syrup in this shake or much vanilla taste either; it was like a weak chocolate shake. Drinkable and not terrible but not was I was expecting either.
Conclusion
I fear that Shack Shack has already devolved into yet-another fast food burger joint.
I think what happened here was that they expected to get slammed and they pre-made a lot of burgers at lunch hour, and what I got was a burger that was cooked an hour earlier that nobody bought. If this is their product now they'll be out of business as fast as Spring Chicken at this location. What I got today was absolute garbage and not worth over $10.
.no thanks...