Shake Shack Cardiff Review

The new Shake Shack Cardiff opened just before Christmas, we were invited to their launch party but sadly due to my pregnancy I wasn’t well enough to go, so a few weeks ago they offered for me and Jon to visit and test out their menu for ourselves. We had never tried a Shake Shack before but had seen a few of our fellow bloggers posts on the launch party and everyone seemed very positive about the food, and we do love a good burger so we went with high expectations, and some intrigue as to what the heck ‘concrete’ was! (I’ll explain in a bit if you don’t know).
So the menu is pretty simple, you have a choice of burgers or hotdogs with a few extra toppings, and fries, desserts and drinks (plus they are licensed and have their own brand of beer!!) Here is what we tried and what we thought.

• Jon opted for a double ShackMeister burger with extra bacon – he found it easy to handle as it wasn’t too greasy so didn’t fall apart like some similar burger places. The burger patty itself was average, it was good quality and not fatty but Jon prefers the taste of the salt beef patty of a certain competitor in Cardiff! The beer battered shallots made the burger though, they are totally unique and absolutely delicious, not that the rest of the burger wasn’t good we just both thought the onions were a great addition to the taste and could have eaten a whole load more of them.
• I had a ShackMeister hotdog and was very pleased I had chosen the one topped with the same beer batter shallots as the burger Jon had, so so yummy! The hot dog was a good size for me as I don’t have a huge appetite and found the dog plus half a portion of fries was enough to fill me. The sausage was lovely, a proper pork sausage not a cheap one so it was nice and meaty. The cheese sauce is very American, if you get what I mean, it has that artificial cheese sauce taste which can be really rich, not always a bad thing! lol! But I really enjoyed it.
• Fries (one cheese topped) – Their fries are crinkle cut so were nice and crispy and the portion size was good. They weren’t too salty either which you sometimes find with fast food burger places. Jon really loved the cheese topped ones and rapidly polished them off!
• Jon had a Caramel Milkshake – Which he has stated was one of the best he has tasted as it was such a different and great flavour! But…he was a little disappointed by the fact the places is called Shake Shack yet they don’t make more of a thing of the actual shakes! They are quite pricy at £5.25 yet only come in a regular sized paper drinks cup, nothing special, no whip cream topping or anything!
• I on the other hand had a half and half lemonade iced tea, which was delicious! It is half an american iced tea (no sweeteners) mixed with half fresh made lemonade, yum! I shall be making iced tea like this at home I think. I was also lucky enough to get to try a little experiment by the staff which was to make the tea using half of their special lemonade for that month, which in my case was Mango lemonade, it was so tasty! Exactly like the tropical Lipton! I would encourage Shake Shack to put different flavoured iced teas on their menu permanently!
• Lastly we had our Concrete! – Ok so it turns out concrete is super thick frozen custard blended at a high speed with flavours. But it tastes nothing like custard (luckily as I hate custard!) and is just an insanely creamy rich ice-cream. We had the welsh cake one and a small pot of the current chocolate oreo special for that week. Jon has a much sweeter tooth than me and loved the dessert, he thought the welsh cake was amazing and would gladly return for another one. I on the other hand would struggle to eat the large pot as found it very rich.

Overall we really enjoyed our meal and probably would return again even if just for the concrete or drinks. The only down side really is the price. For what we had (minus the extra experimental tea!) It would work out around £36, which is quite a lot for burger and chips in an essentially fast food restaurant. It is definitely better quality than a McDonalds or Burger King though so can see it being greta for teens or somewhere to go for a fun meal with friends if you didn’t want a proper restaurant meal.

So much of the food and drinks are made fresh in store on the day though which is a big plus point for me as its not all frozen food like McDonalds and Burger King. You can actually see them making up the frozen yogurt in giant ice-cream type machines if you are there during the day as the kitchen is glass surrounded. Its also super clean and the atmosphere and decor are industrial and cool.

Have you tried Shake Shack in Cardiff or one of their other stores? What do you think of it?