Habit Burger & Grill — Restaurant in San Jose

It's a decent burger, and I loved the fried green beans, but then those had better be good at $3 for a serving. I went at about 7PM and it was very crowded. If you miss eating in a full dining hall in high school, or miss the mess hall from your Army days, this place is for you. It's loud too, because they play music fairly loud in there and you get that plus hearing everyone's vacation plans and how Mom's going to have her cancer treated, from the people you're literally elbow-to-elbow with.

BUT .... the area the store is in, is still a factor. I found out tonight the bike thieves love this mall too. This mall is right next to a hobo camp along the railroad tracks, and the huge strung-out homeless camping area along Coyote Creek. There are sketchy people all over the place, all the time.

I'm lucky that although I use a cable lock which is probably not the best idea around here, it's thicker than most and the heroin addict using the cable cutters didn't get all the way through. Or they got surprised. The bike racks are in a dark corner and there's no video camera.

I say heroin addict because as I walked into Sprouts I heard a couple of raspy-voiced bums, a male and a female, yelling at each other and the female walking away from their jalopy saying "I have to use..." meaning she needs a hit of heroin. These kind of people are loitering in the parking lot or "passing through" looking for opportunities all the time.

There's a security service that patrols the neighborhood. I think the people running this new mall are doing to learn from the mall caddy-corner from them and hire security for the mall alone.

You want to be very careful about your bike, or your car, or your purse, etc., don't leave valuables on seats, the usual precautions you'd take in any bad...

Really good burgers as well as Tri-tip sandwiches! (My friend had the Chicken Char & loved it!) Fries & onion rings were also good and the side Caesar salad was bigger than I thought it'd be for the $2 something that it cost. Not to mention, it was damn delicious too! The employees were friendly, helpful and nice. Also, there was none of this "nickel & dime'ing you to death" if you wanted extra dressing for your salad or extra bbq sauce, like some restaurants do to you.

They're a "little pricey" in my opinion, but not too much and not unreasonable either. For 2 of us (ladies) for lunch it was $27 something. We had (1) tri-tip sandwich, (1) chicken char sandwich, (1) fries, (1) onion rings, (1) side Caesar salad & (1) soda.

They also have a dessert menu with several treats to choose from. (Ice cream sundaes, etc.)

Now for the negative.....

If you're environmentally conscious about the types of containers/packaging that your food comes in, well.... let's just say, I guess it's better than styrofoam. Albeit, not by much I'm afraid. They're fancy little things. I'll give 'em that. But... I was cringing, just doing a quick visual sweep of the dining room, the outside dining area and the to go bags, all with their little black food containers and "fancy" clear lids, knowing prob less than 1% (being very generous) would ever make it into a recycling bin. I didn't notice a receptacle for plastics to dispose of your used containers for recycling nor do I know if it's possible to order your food just on/in paper. I also don't remember what the fries and onion rings came in, but I'm thinking it was paper cartons. Anyhow.... if it matters to you, then you might want to research different options.

Overall though, I recommend this place and I'd...

I decided to try The Habit Burger Grill a couple of days ago as I wanted something better than an In-N-Out burger. It is located in a large shopping plaza on the corner of Brokaw and Oakland which has a large parking lot that fills up on weekends but other days is not too bad. At around 11:30 am on a Saturday there was a line about 5-6 people deep and a bunch of people were waiting for their orders. I decided to get a double char with cheese ($5.70) and strawberry shake ($3.85) to-go. I was given a buzzer which would alert when the order was ready. Unfortunately, it came to life only after 20 minutes so it was a long wait.

The issue with this long wait is that they make the milkshakes pretty quickly and have them sitting out on the counter waiting for the burger, so by the time you get the shake it has tuned to water. Goes without saying I was not a fan of the shake. I would have also liked it to have been a little sweeter for my taste. Coming to the main star of the meal – the burger; it was pretty good and well worth the wait. I liked it better than In-N-Out but them again I’m not one of the crazy fans of In-N-Out to begin with. When compared to Five Guys which is just across the street, I felt that this burger had a lot less grease and was cooked to a well done as compared to the burgers at Five Guys.

Price-wise the burger is almost 40% cheaper when compared to Five Guys and each has its own cooking technique and flavor profile. The problem is that I did not find it so good as to pick Habit over In-N-Out for my regular burger meal, so it becomes a place to visit...