American hamburger chain Smashburger opens Cambridge branch

American hamburger chain Smashburger, founded in Denver, Colorado in 2007, has opened a branch in Cambridge – its eighth in the UK.

Located at 27 Hills Road, the restaurant officially opened last Wednesday (4 September).

Dudley Buxton, the chain’s head of marketing, said: “We’ve been really happy with the opening; the number of customers that are coming through the doors has been above expectations, and then obviously the students start coming back into Cambridge over the next couple of weeks so I would expect to see a further boost.”

Gino Bujari, manager of Smashburger Cambridge, added: “We’re excited to have opened our new store in Cambridge, to serve tasty burgers to the local community.

“We’re also passionate about engraining ourselves in the local community. This week we have delivered over 100 hand-crafted smashburgers to local heroes including staff at the fire station and NHS employees.”

Smashburger says it uses the freshest ingredients to make its hand-crafted burgers.

Each burger is made fresh to order and beef burgers are smashed onto a hot grill to sear the flavours inside the patty.

The verdict:

My wife and I went along to try the food at Smashburger and were pleasantly surprised by the sheer variety on offer - not just as far as the burgers are concerned, but the fries too.

There are a number of mouth-watering loaded fries options, as well as the now-standard French fries and sweet potato fries.

The fries can also be substituted for ‘tater tots’, and the ‘loaded’ options on the menu include truffle fries, BBQ, bacon and cheddar fries, and bacon cheeseburger fries.

We went for the latter, sharing one between two, and very much enjoyed them - the meat, bacon, cheddar cheese, ketchup and mustard really adding to the overall flavour.

Burger-wise, my wife had the Double Spicy Jalapeño Smash, while I opted for the Double Oklahoma Smash, which had caramelised onions, American cheese, ketchup, mustard and pickles.

The burgers were delicious, and one thing we both commented on was how tasty the meat was.

The bread too was uniquely different, and we were informed that Smashburger has its bread specially made.

There aren’t that many options in the way of pudding, but by that point we weren’t really hungry anyway.

We chose milkshakes to round off the meal - my wife had the Lotus Biscoff and I had the Oreo.

They were very nice indeed, although as they were fairly heavy, I’m glad we waited until after we’d eaten to fully appreciate them.

As far as burgers and fries go, I’d say you can’t go far wrong with Smashburger.

For more information, visit smashburger.co.uk.