Shake Shack has come a long way, baby! Since its humble beginnings as a food cart positioned inside of Madison Square Park in New York City, the franchise has expanded across the East Coast and internationally to cities like London and Dubai. The Las Vegas Shake Shack, which opened last month, represents their first West Coast location and it’s situated, fittingly, right in front of The Brooklyn Bridge just outside of New York New York Hotel and Casino! With the hype surrounding Shake Shack’s opening and the gorgeous sunny weather, we decided to play tourists for the day and check out the new kid on the block.
The shack, occupies a prime Strip location at the North-East corner of the NYNY hotel, directly across from the MGM Grand. At 2:30pm on a sunny January afternoon, there was a lot of foot traffic on the Strip and a lot of people enjoying meals outside on Shake Shack’s large patio seating area. Although the restaurant has an outdoor takeaway window to order cold items like frozen custard, shakes, concretes, beverages and beer, we opted to go inside (there is a lot of seating inside too) to order a proper lunch.
Out of all the delicious-sounding items on the menu, we chose to keep it simple; we dined on the ShackBurger, SmokeShack, French fries, and a vanilla shake. Their burgers are made with 100% all natural Angus beef given no antibiotics or hormones and are typically cooked at medium. We asked for our burgers to be well-done and they were still juicy and flavorful. Here’s how everything looked.
Both burgers were very tasty, but the SmokeShack with applewood-smoked bacon and chopped cherry pepper was outstanding. As a self-proclaimed ketchup junkie, no ketchup was needed at all; the ShackSauce combined with the chopped cherry pepper relish hit all the right notes. We were big fans of the crinkle cut french fries too! They had just the right amount of crinkle and crunch to hold a substantial amount of ketchup without folding over. And the shake you ask? It was pretty darn good as well.
Overall, we definitely enjoyed our lunch at the Shack and we left discussing other items on the menu that we’d like to try. The food is definitely on par with other popular chains like In-N-Out Burger and while it’s more expensive than your average fast food joint, the location and the quality of the food justifies the price, in our opinion, especially when you can sit outside and enjoy the glorious Vegas weather.
Shake shack is open until midnight (Sun-Thu) and 2am (Friday and Saturday). If you are looking to soak up some booze with a late night burger fix and are in the neighborhood, this is definitely a place to consider.
3790 South Las Vegas Boulevard, (702) 222-6730 shakeshack.com
