After launching as a food truck in 2014, The Cut finally opened their first restaurant in the Westpark Plaza in Irvine. Serving handcrafted burgers, sandwiches, appetizers and salads, each item on the menu was created from scratch making The Cut unique from most burger joints. Upon entering the establishment, you can really notice the attention to detail, the interior design is reminiscent of a southern home with wood and brick covering the walls in different shades of brown. In addition, the restaurant has a huge glass wall that can be removed so that customers can smell the fresh air while still being protected from the sun.

When I visited the establishment, the restaurant was not very busy so service was quite fast. The menu itself was quite simple with all the food options on the front of the menu and all the drink options on the back as the restaurant served local crafted beers, wines and cocktails to accompany the meal. The menu also mentioned how all of the meat the restaurant prepared was certified humane and free-range meat that was also hormone-free and antibiotic-free. While this meant the meat would supposedly taste better, it was overall more expensive than a normal burger.

Finally, when it was time to order, I ordered two burgers to share, the Savory Burger and the Sweet and Spicy Burger. After about fifteen minutes, our food had arrived. Both burgers were cooked to medium, which is slightly uncooked in the middle. While for many burger joints this would be unpleasant to eat. The Cut uses a better cut of meat so they can grill their burgers to medium so that their customers can experience the better quality of beef. As a result, the taste of the patty was almost perfect with the beef being very juicy and having a rich buttery taste.

The Savory burger was a very creamy and rich burger. From the handmade burger buns to the bacon relish, to the aioli, the burger melted in your mouth with a hint of crunch from the relish. One thing I wished they would have added was caramelized onions to break up all the saltier components. The Sweet and Spicy Burger was also pretty decent. The sauce composed of honey mixed with sriracha was not too sweet or spicy. The addition of arugula helped break down the different components of the burger and the bacon added a nice crunch. Overall, both burgers were unique in taste and the additional components to the burger, besides the better quality of meat, complemented the burger patty perfectly.

In terms of pricing, the burgers were definitely more expensive and were not very big. The Savory Burger was $11 and the Sweet and Spicy Burger was $12. Even though these burgers used handmade buns and better quality meat, the pricing was not worth how much food I received.

If you can look past the slightly more expensive pricing, The Cut is still a worthwhile burger joint. The use of better quality meat goes a long way in a better tasting burger which you cannot get anywhere else.