Fiamma Burger — Restaurant in Bellingham

How far up its own a** can one restaurant get? I don't know, but Fiamma Burger seems to be doing its level best to find out.

The menu offers no surprises. Like every other burger joint out there, it offers the standard fare: The Plain, the Plain with Cheese, the Double Plain, the BBQ One, the Mushroom One, and the One Not Like The Others (in this case a green chile cheeseburger that may at one point have been made with bison but doesn't seem to be anymore). Disappointing, but not unexpected. We just went for the usual order: a mushroom burger, a BBQ Bacon burger, onion rings, and strawberry milkshake. Simple, right?

I tapped in the number to call and place the order for pickup and was greeted with a recording voice telling me that they do not accept phone orders "in order to ensure the freshness of the food." Don't lie to me, Fiamma Burger. You don't take phone orders so you can capture my credit card info before taking the order. I swear, there's something about Bellingham that makes every business super paranoid about people running off without paying. I've lived in a lot of different places, and I've never been treated this badly as a customer until I moved here.

But we've already decided that this is going to be dinner, so off to the web order I go. Immediately I get a pop-up asking me to download some other app to place the order. Turns out there's a pop-up after adding each item, including pop-ups to advertise chicken plates from the same restaurant and to beg for tips.

Despite all this, I manage to get everything in the cart, then whoops! I've added a vanilla milkshake instead of a strawberry. No problem, I'll just remove it... except I can't. The cart checkout button has docked to the bottom of the screen and is covering the Edit/Remove links for the last item. So now I have to play a little game of jenga, adding things to the cart and removing them in order to kick the milkshake up above the button so I can replace it.

So after all this headache, frustration, and nonsense which could have been replaced with thirty seconds on the phone (another benefit of forcing the web order: they can understaff by one more person), I finally manage to get the order in and head out to pick it up. Does it live up to all the hype?

Absolutely not.

The onion rings are limp and greasy. They get a little leeway because they've been in the car for about ten minutes, but it's pretty clear that their fry oil is either not heated to the proper temperature or overloaded and not given time to re-heat. The milkshake is also unremarkable. I'm not really sure what the difference is supposed to be with having custard instead of ice cream, but whatever it is there's no real difference in the taste.

The burgers, generally speaking, seem like they could have had some potential. The beef has more flavor than average, but everything surrounding that generally fails to hold up its end. The Mushroom Burger is supposed to have mushrooms, swiss, and grilled onions along with burger sauce. I couldn't taste any cheese at all, nor burger sauce, and I initially mistook the grilled onions for sauerkraut, as they were shredded and soft, with no indication they'd ever touched a grill at all.

The BBQ Bacon burger was a little better, but Fiamma has made the strange choice to add bleu cheese to this burger, which doesn't mesh well with the sweet sauce and smokey bacon. The burger sauce was more prevalent here and has a flavor that's different enough from most burger sauces to be interesting. It's just a shame they never seem to really do anything with it.

Topping it all off for both burgers was a bun that somehow manages to be completely dry and flavorless without actually being stale. Add to that the $13 dollar price tag for each burger by itself with no sides, for a burger no larger than any fast-food sandwich, and you've got a meal that is...

Sometime in the last 6+ months, Fiamma's menu has shrunk to a fraction of its original size and now offers a list of burgers that, in my opinion, are a bit samey. For comparison, my favorite order used to be the Lamb Burger: two Lamb-beef patties with arugula, pickled onions, crispy onions, and house made curry mayo on a fresh brioche bun. It was simple, but had an incredible flavor profile I've never experienced elsewhere. You could also get alternative protein options such as salmon or bison, and their list for custard shake toppings was impressive. Now, their base menu offers a list of basic, classic-style smash burgers. Even the Bellingham Burger, which has potato strings, ham, and an egg, and housemade sauce, still feels very similar to breakfast burgers you can get around town.

My family and I also noticed how much the portion sizes have shrunk. This is especially noticeable with the fries. I love smash burgers, and I appreciate that they are smushed thin so they cook fast and get a flavorful crust. But my mom's burger had two patties that were so extremely thin, they were dry, paper-thin meat crisps. Comparing it to burgers I've ordered in the past (again, around 6+ months ago before the change), it appeared as if the amount of beef was halved, but still smashed to match the diameter of the bun.

Their chicken is still good and reasonably priced and their house sauces are still delectable, though now you have to pay extra to get them in a dipping up. As disappointing as this is, it makes sense with our economy.

I suspect these changes were made to deal with rising costs and to potentially reduce waste (after all, their previous menu was HUGE). But as a result, I feel like Fiamma no longer offers burgers that you can't get anywhere else. To new visitors who want something unique, I recommend looking at their rotating featured item. For casual visitors, I recommend their chicken which is still good and are reasonably priced, though most of their options, like the burgers, can be found elsewhere. Their nashville chicken was one of my favorites pre-menu change which appears the same, so I can easily recommend that for spice lovers. Personally, I can still see myself ordering their chicken moving forward, but I don't gave much interest in giving their burgers another shot until a really cool featured item comes around.

I still respect the staff as they appear to be passionate about their food, and according to their social media, it looks like they make an effort to make connections throughout our community with collabs and events. However, I hope that one day they can regain a bit of their...

This is a confusing place and the cashier's. Don't explain how the menu works. you have to keep asking them questions. If you just want a reasonable hot greasy salty delicious juicy hot burger with all the toppings and hot seasoned fries, you're not gonna find that here. They told us it was gonna be a 25 minute Wait when we were ordering food and that didn't even make sense. It took so long to get the food. And then the portions were so small and it wasn't even hot. And then you still had to dress your own Burger and go back up there to get all the sauces on it like mayo and mustard and ketchup. There's no place to sit when you go in there. And when you do sit its some uncomfortable metal things and woooden benches and everybody's in the way of each other. You don't get fries and drink with the Burger That's $15 and the Burger doesn't come with lettuce and tomatoes on it-You have to add that stuff on and its stuff that would regularly make sense to have on the Burger like onions tomatoes lettuce. They don't put it on there. The menu should be outside before you walk up to the counter Because it takes a lot to put an order together That makes sense of what you really wanna eat. When you think of burger and fries You don't think you're gonna have to put a dissertation together just to order it. It just takes all the fun out of the food making burgers and fries complicated like this. And then you get it and you're still hungry. And it gives you so much gas and bloating even though it's supposed to be better meat. Theres nothing special about this. If I wanted to dress my own Burger and serve myself and wait long i can do...