Lunch, Anyone? Lee’s Burgers

Looking for something more than your run-of-the-mill burger? Try Lee’s Burgers, directly across from the Coolidge Corner Green Line C branch stop. Photos by Smaranda Tolosano (CAS’17)

When popular Newton burger joint Lee’s Burgers opened a second location in Coolidge Corner last year, it was greeted with enthusiasm. Although the area had many restaurants, none was dedicated to burgers. With Lee’s, in the former Naked Pizza spot directly across from the Coolidge Corner T stop, coming up on its one-year anniversary, we stopped by to see if it lived up to the Newton locale’s reputation.

We arrived between the lunch and dinner crowd, but discovered a fair amount of people, like us, who had stopped by for a late midday meal. We seated ourselves and immediately got to the business at hand: deciding what to order.

Lee’s offers more than you’ll find at a typical burger joint. Yes, you can order a traditional beef cheeseburger ($5.75). And you can build your own burger, with toppings that include grilled onions or peppers, mushrooms, avocado, bacon, and guacamole. But the signature burgers are what make Lee’s unique. The turkey burger ($6.95) comes with avocado, cheese, grilled mushrooms, lettuce, tomatoes, and the house sauce, the teriyaki burger ($6.95) with lettuce, cucumber, teriyaki sauce, and caramelized onions. Chicken and veggie burgers are also available.

We settled on the portobello burger ($6.75), a cheese-stuffed fried portobello mushroom patty with Lee’s sauce, a kind of spicy, sweet aoli. The meaty, crispy portobello and oozy cheese were a dynamite combination, and the sauce provided a tangy kick. However, the burger could have used some lettuce or tomato, as well as more sauce. We also tried the hummus burger ($6.95), served with house-made garlic sesame hummus, onion rings, and pickles. The patty had a great grilled flavor and the pickles added a vinegary punch. But there wasn’t much garlic sesame hummus on the burger, and the onion rings were unremarkable. We wished we’d ordered the teriyaki burger instead.

Lee’s has nearly as many options when it comes to fries. Why order standard French fries ($1.75 small, $2.75 regular) when you can order sweet potato fries ($2.95 small, $3.95 regular), bacon cheese fries ($4.95), or chili cheese fries ($3.95)? They all sounded delicious, but we went with a regular-sized portion of the honey-glazed sweet potato fries, which turned out to be an excellent choice. They were crispy and the honey glaze brought out the vegetable’s natural sweetness. One thing to keep in mind when ordering any fries: a regular portion is colossal—we had leftovers despite the best effort of both of us to polish them off.

What would a burger joint be without shakes? Lee’s offers real fruit shakes, in flavors like raspberry and banana ($4.50), rather than your classic vanilla and chocolate. It also has an interesting selection of smoothies. We chose the green tea strawberry smoothie ($4.95). Although the combination of green tea and strawberry was atypical, it worked. It was somewhat icy and tasted like it might have milk, but that could have been a side effect of the green tea powder. Next time we want to try the Fantastic Day smoothie ($4.95), a blend of strawberry, banana, apple, cucumber, and lemon.

The restaurant’s clean, modern décor—pom-pom-like metal lights, bright orange plastic chairs, and sleek glass menu on the wall—made it feel a bit like a display room at IKEA, but in a good way. And unlike a lot of fast-casual restaurants, here the staff brings your food to the table, a nice plus.

Compared with a lot of the burger chains around Boston, Lee’s provides more beef—or turkey or veggies—for your buck. And while some dishes leave room for improvement, others are outstanding. The Coolidge Corner Lee’s doesn’t yet reach the Newton restaurant’s acclaim, but it’s worth trying.

Lee’s Burgers, 1331 Beacon St., Brookline, is open Monday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., and accepts all major credit cards. Take-out is available, but there is no delivery. Take an MBTA Green Line C trolley outbound to Coolidge Corner.

This is part of a weekly series featuring Boston lunch spots of interest to the BU community. If you have any suggestions for places we should feature, leave them in the Comment section below. Check out our list of lunchtime tips on Foursquare.

Kylie Obermeier can be reached at kylieko@bu.edu.

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