We love a secret menu, and we love a burger – the long-closed Craigie on Main created a frenzy by having a secret burger but limiting it to 18 a night. If you lined up a minute too late, well, sorry, you could try again the next day. Alden & Harlow in Harvard Square created a similar buzz.
Season to Taste, a farm-to-table concept, has thrived since trading up to 70 seats in Neighborhood 9 two years ago from the 20 it had in North Cambridge – to the extent it is taking reservations for bar seats. And it has an off-menu burger too: bar only, Thursdays only.
As of Friday, though, the $18 burger becomes available at the bar seven nights a week, said Robert Harris, Season’s chef-owner. (Customers can get it for takeout, too.)
The burger uses two patties of Andy Carbone’s grass-fed beef from Massachusetts, Cabot cheddar from Vermont, a Martin’s potato bun and Season to Taste’s housemade secret sauce and pickles. It comes with hand-cut russet potato fries. “It’s really a super tasty burger. We are really proud of it,” Harris said.
“We like to take something traditional and put a local bent on it. We’re not reinventing anything here, but everything is made from scratch except the bun,” Harris said Friday. That includes the pickles, which Harris began making during his days at the East Coast Grill (RIP) in Inman Square. Those pickles get chopped up and go into the burger’s “secret sauce” too. Harris admits with a laugh that this is his “fancy Big Mac.”
It was created by necessity during Season’s pandemic period of takeout, and the restaurant kept it on the menu for a while when the Covid lockdowns ended. Lack of response – fair on a menu where’s there so much competition for diners’ attention – took it off the menu and limited to one day a week. Then a buzz began, growing over the past year. “We started hearing from people who wanted it all the time,” Harris said.
The change to seven days for the burger comes as a celebration of the restaurant’s second anniversary “here on the edge of Harvard Square,” Harris said. “We want to thank our guests and the community for their support through the pandemic and successfully coming out together on the other side. Guests crave Season to Taste’s secret burger, so we are happy and ready to offer it.”
Season to Taste, 1678 Massachusetts Ave., Neighborhood 9, Cambridge
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