The Bay Area’s most expensive burger isn’t very good

Selby’s, a 4-year-old Bay Area restaurant across the street from America’s most expensive ZIP code, is an enigma wrapped in a paradox stuffed in the Winchester Mystery House.

It’s one of the most gorgeous restaurants on San Francisco’s Peninsula. It’s held a Michelin star for each of the past three years. And — despite prestige and pedigree — it’s responsible for the Bay Area’s most disappointing burger.

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It’s 5:10 p.m. on a Wednesday and I’m apparently 100 years old because I’m headed to the earliest of early bird dinners.

I pull up to 3001 El Camino Real, an astoundingly beautiful building that looks more like a home you’d find on a Lake Como, Italy, waterfront than a busy Redwood City thoroughfare. A French Quarter-style gas lantern hangs above an entrance adorned with two dark espresso wooden doors featuring brass handles large enough to suggest I’ll need some umph to swing them open. Except someone on Selby’s staff is already muscling them ajar for me, eventually revealing an opulent interior anyone wearing Allbirds and a Patagonia vest would feel right at home in.

I walk inside and immediately start looking for the burger.

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The Black Label features a custom blended patty from San Rafael’s high-end Flannery Beef, a challah bun, a soft cow’s milk cheese (Robiola Rustica), lettuce, tomato, onion and about 5 ounces of shaved Australian black truffles.

This particular cheeseburger costs a mind-boggling $50 at the bar, or you can get it as part of a $105 three-course tasting menu in their well-appointed dining room. It’s currently the most expensive burger in the entire Bay Area, assuming the crown from a long-line of wildly expensive gimmicks that started 14 years ago with $60 Rossini burgers (Australian Wagyu beef with sauteed foie gras and shaved black truffles) at Hubert Keller’s now-closed Burger Bar in Union Square and continued more recently with a $30 offering at The Palm Court that one writer described as “the death of San Francisco.”

The thing is: it’s just not very good.

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I’ve always considered myself a burger egalitarian. Thick ones, smashed ones, beef ones, Impossible ones, doubles, triples, ones with an egg on top, cheap ones, rare ones, or a San Francisco one Anthony Bourdain once described as a “good motherf—kin’ burger” — I’m an equal opportunist when it comes to America’s pattied wonders.

And — despite this being a phenomenal restaurant — this just isn’t a good burger. It’s overwhelmingly rich, unnecessarily decadent (the truffles really don’t do much) and no one is going to finish this in a single sitting and not feel like curling over into the fetal position. Reports when the restaurant initially opened in 2019 suggested it took six months to create and was an attempt to next-level the $25 Spruce burger — one of the hands-down best burgers I’ve ever had in the Bay Area. Award-winning chef Mark Sullivan of Spruce and the now-closed Saratoga fame (he earned both locations Michelin stars) was responsible for the Black Label, which previously used a brioche bun from Oakland’s Firebrand breads, and came with Époisses (a different soft cheese made from cow’s milk from the Burgundy region of France), before returning post-pandemic with this slightly altered version of next-leveling.

The thing is, the Spruce burger and its delicious English muffin bun (mmm… English muffin bun…) doesn’t need to be next-leveled. It’s already at the appropriate level, an already high enough burger tier where the ingredients and care pay off the price — something the Selby’s burger doesn’t come close to doing.

As Jeff Goldblum once said: 

“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

Selby’s, 3001 El Camino Real, Redwood City. Open daily, 5-9 p.m.. (Pro tip: Get the vesper martini.)