5280 Burger & Taphouse — Restaurant in Austin

If the price point was slightly closer to most other burger options, it'd be a three star with a lot more potential. But at a higher price point, I expect more.

Let's talk about some areas for improvement for this new restaurant that I hope are temporary hiccups. Because truthfully, right now, my experience was that of going to a restaurant serving a lot of the standard food service options with some attempts at elevation, albeit with the corresponding price point.

First and foremost, I was surprised by the lack of iced tea. I almost thought it was state law to have iced tea at any restaurant in Texas. (In fact, one of our several servers said pretty much the same thing.) Instead of tea, one of the servers suggested lemonade -- which tasted suspiciously like Minute Maid lemonade from a Coke fountain. The chips, queso, salsa, and guac were all good -- but the chips needed to be served warm.

But of course, we came for burgers and fries, so those bear reviewing in depth. We did a basket of fries and onion rings as a side. (FYI, the burgers are a la carte, so you'll probably need to order a side of some sort.) The fries were pretty standard skin-on fries like you find at most places, but with a heavy dose of a coarse salt which enhanced the taste of the otherwise standard fries. The thick onion rings were some of the better thick onion rings I've had, namely because the heavy chicken fried batter stuck to the rings well. As for the burgers, I was definitely underwhelmed as was my dining companion. We both noted that the burgers would've definitely benefitted from seasoning and a bit more time on the grill. To be blunt, the burgers were slightly underdone and had zero flavor, which was disappointing for a high end burger option. Also, one of the burgers was prepared incorrectly and needed to be sent back.

On a final note, the service is still getting its sea legs, so to speak. When we entered, there was no one at the host stand. After a brief wait, we were seated by one of the owners who came over from the bar. We then were visited by three different servers. The first took our drink order. Another took our food order and yet another came by to say that he was supposed to be our server. Yet, despite seeing these servers (and another who brought part of our order), we had to flag down help when one of the burgers needed to be sent back -- and request a drink refill later.

Truthfully, some of the flubs with both the food and service seemed right out of a Gordon Ramsay or Robert Irvine television show. As of now, there are a lot of growing pains here. I'm just hopeful that these issues get worked out before the space is vacant again. Without improvement, I'm worried the same fate will befall 5280 that hit the previous restaurant. Namely, the neighborhood crowd will be excited and raving about a new restaurant, then becoming disillusioned and...

This was such a weird experience.

Although we were only waiting maybe 5 minutes, the person who led us to our table apologized for “the wait”. Strange, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time. We had a server-in-training situation which is also totally fine, they were both super sweet to us. We ordered all Wagyu beef burgers, all medium-rare except one person wanted well-done, along with a basket of fries for the table.

She, too, apologized for “the wait” took our order, and then read it back to us and it was all correct. You could tell she was new but she was doing a great job!

We got our drinks, I thought the Tito’s strawberry lemonade drink was way, way too sweet but you know it’s lemonade and it didn’t taste bad. Certainly not enough to complain about. The others ordered beer so it was as expected.

Then, the manager came by and again… apologized for “the wait”. He said something like how we all looked hungry and like?? Yeah that’s why we are here? He gave us a run-down on how they order all-natural beef, that one burger was really spicy, etc. Still it was going ok so far. He made some comment to the waitress that she had to take care of us and how much we needed food. Again, it’s barely been 10 minutes at this point.

Then the lead server came by (also super nice and sweet) and read out our order a second time to check if it was right. Understandable, since the server who took our order was new. She apologized for “the wait” too.

The manager came around again, he just kept making… strange comments about how we needed more food.

Yet another person came by and read our order to us a third time for some reason? It’s starting to get really weird now.

So we get our food pretty quickly and every single one of our burgers are well-done. I thought maybe since they were wagyu beef they would taste really good still but… they just… weren’t that good. The main server was there right away and immediately offered to have the 3 burgers re-made, but we were already pretty hungry and they honestly didn’t taste “bad”… they certainly weren’t $15-18 burgers. And we absolutely did not want to stick around this place any longer than we had to.

The manager came back around after we were finished eating (I think for the third or fourth time??) and asked how everything was and someone in our party said “good” and the manager said something like “not perfect?”, it just gave off weird uncle energy.

It felt like maybe these servers were going to get yelled at or something? That was the main reason I did not want to say anything at the time because he seemed to be micromanaging everyone around him. I think he probably meant well but it was just so strange....

Went in for lunch. This is a restaurant that is wholy fixed in Denver. If you're expecting Texas chili don't! It tastes more like hot dog chili than any chili I've ever had here in Texas. It's full of cumin so I hope you are a cumin enthusiast. The hamburgers may be wagyu beef however their prefab pre-formed burgers. And for the price they're charging I don't think that's what people are expecting. They also go on and on about their gourmet frozen custard which they charge an exorbitant price for. It was served on a stale cone. And even after my husband mentioned it to the server. She managed to take one of them off and not both of them. Look we don't want anything for free but if you're touting something being gourmet The expectation is for it to be really good and really fresh. My vanilla so-called custard tasted more like ice milk that I get at Jason's deli for free. If you want gourmet custard maybe these people should walk themselves over to Freddy's and have real custard. It is a somewhat full bar. However they don't make any micheladas because they don't have Mexican beer. Out of all the beers this placed touts They don't have a Mexican beer? I don't know what it is about this location on woodhollow several things have been in there including El arroyo which I understand he's supposed to be a partner of again why I don't understand about the Mexican beer. That location must be cursed nothing seems to make it and if things go in there they really aren't worth a damn. If you're looking for a good bar to just go after work - a good neighborhood bar this is your place but if you're expecting good food I'd look...