Burger of the month: Blue cheese, maple bacon and the sweet smell of the high life

The most important thing to know about the festive and glamorous new A Crystal Cove restaurant, a modern spinoff of the old A Restaurant in Newport Beach, is this: The menu here bears almost no resemblance to the original A. Instead it is a virtual carbon copy of the menu at CdM, the company’s other restaurant in Corona del Mar. That’s not a complaint, but it is important to know. Given the name and association, some folks might come here expecting to find an old-school steakhouse menu more akin the original A’s.

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All that said, one thing on the menu in Crystal Cove does ring familiar from Newport Beach: the burger. At the original A, you’ll find the burger only on the bar menu (although it’s always available in the dining room if you ask). Here, it’s featured as an entree on the all-day menu.

It is as delicious as ever.

It is expensive, of course. I don’t think anybody comes to the Crystal Cove Shopping Center looking for a cheap sandwich. The burger costs $28 (and you’ll want to order a cocktail to go with it, for which you’ll need to budget another $18). The burger is undoubtedly very high-quality. They make it with a terrific half-pound patty of ground chuck from Niman Ranch, along with wonderfully fragrant blue cheese, thick maple-cured bacon and sauteed onions. It automatically comes with hand-cut, twice-fried russet potatoes, which are fairly perfect. Take one bite of either and you’ll end up devouring the whole platter whether you intended to or not.