Fly Burgers in Da Nang, Vietnam - it's good, but a bit pricey
Now for everyone reading this is Europe or North America it might seem really stingy for me to expect the world from a burger that costs $3.50 but you need to understand the economy of scale. For any burger to cost more than a couple dollars over here in Vietnam means that those burgers must be of a different caliber - one of excellence. While the burgers at Fly Burgers were good, they simply were not special enough for the relatively high price that was paid for them.
Located down an infrequently traveled alley of sorts, we only discovered this place because i was walking my dog and saw a sign that featured a burger that had 2 Carolina Reaper peppers on it. If you are not aware the Carolina Reaper is rated as the spiciest pepper in the world at over 2 million Scoville Units (Tabasco is 1,500 on the same scale.)
Their menus is small, which is always a good sign to me because I feel like places with enormous menus can't possibly excel at making everything they put on there.
I am not the kind of person that wants to have my mouth be on fire but I do have a friend that when we go eat Indian food he says "hot hot hot hot hot hot hot" to the waiter in an almost condescending "please try to hurt me" manner. I wanted to see if he was up for the challenge. Had he not said "yes" we likely would have never gone to Fly Burgers.
I went for the standard "Fly Burger" and the couple i was there with had the "Chickawowow" fried chicken sandwich, and my pal ordered the "Fly Burger" with a half portion of Carolina Reaper.
The first thing that disappointed me a bit was the size of this burger. At $3, this burger was just a normal size - actually quite small compared to the price. There are dozen different places in this area where we can get a larger burger than this for about half this price.
The reaper burger disappointingly didn't actually have a reaper pepper on it, but rather a "reaper paste" so I guess we'll never really know if my friend "Captain spicy pants" can handle the full pepper. His burger was essentially the same thing as mine, but more expensive. Although I did see a single droplet of sweat hit his brow while consuming it, he never exhibited any difficulty in eating it and said it was hot, but not uncomfortably so.
The chicken sandwich was the most impressive looking of the 3 orders, and according to my friend it tasted great, until we got a bad surprise at the end when it was raw in the middle. Since we didn't come here for free Salmonella, she stopped eating at that point. Hopefully early enough. This says to me the obvious: Their chicken patties are frozen, and they didn't even microwave it before throwing it in the deep fryer. This is dangerous and unacceptable in my opinion - and i owned a restaurant where we specialized in cutting corners.
We didn't kick up much of a fuss but did point it out to the manager, who as it turns out is a Vietnamese man who lived for years in New York, and speaks English probably better than any of us do. He was apologetic (as he should be) and hopefully it was a learning situation. He offered to take it off the bill but since she had already eaten most of it, we settled on half price.
Things I liked about Fly Burger
Great staff, interesting menu choices, the best fries I have had anywhere in Vietnam, and the chef doesn't overcook the beef (burgers were all perfectly medium-rare by default.)
Things I did not like about Fly Burger
Too expensive for what it is that you receive on all counts other than the fries, kind of misleading advertising about the Reaper peppers that you don't actually receive, and of course serving raw chicken is unacceptable.
Overall I think that I probably will not return to this place other than to get the fries and have a chat with the owner and he was such a nice guy that I feel a little bit bad saying kind of mean stuff about his establishment - but it's all true, unfortunately.
I may also return if someone is arrogant about their spice threshold and complains that stuff isn't spicy enough - maybe ask for a double portion of the paste on their burger and watch them suffer.
Nadi, on the other hand, wants us to return to Fly Burger immediately and as frequently as possible.
Location including GPS coords
can I pweeze have more fwies?