Closed. Saint Theo's is no longer open. We’re keeping this page up because our score and notes still describe a meal we ate.

#87 in NYC

Saint Theo's

West Village, Manhattan

6.4/10

#87 NYC · SOLID

Brotherly Breakdown

Written by Brotherly Burgers

Saint Theo's burger reads well on paper and does too much in practice. On the menu it is a polished Italian bistro bacon cheeseburger with caramelized onions, bacon, and fontina on a poppy seed bun.
In the bite it is a texture problem. There is a great deal going on, the bun is firm and the poppy seeds pile more texture on top of everything else, and what would usually be a strength became overwhelming. A solid burger doing too much.

Best for

Italian bistro burgers, fontina, caramelized onions and bacon, and weekend lunch in the West Village.

The catch

Too much texture. The firm, seeded bun compounds what the bacon and onions already bring, and the burger reads busy rather than layered.

What it's actually like

Saint Theo's is a coastal Italian restaurant in the West Village, and its burger is a weekend lunch item only, which is worth knowing before planning around it. The build is caramelized onion, bacon, and fontina on a poppy seed bun.

That is a coherent idea and the execution was competent. Our summary word for the burger was solid, and nothing in our notes criticizes the flavor of any single component.

The failure is textural, which is unusual. Bacon brings crunch and chew. The caramelized onions bring their own. The bun is firm, and the poppy seeds on top of it add a fourth layer. Texture contrast is normally something we look for, and here there was so much of it and so little relief that the burger stopped reading as one thing.

The kitchen also did not send out the same burger twice. Of the two we ordered, one came medium and one came medium rare.

We should be plain that this write-up has a gap: our notes contain no assessment of the beef's flavor at all. We can tell you how the burger ate and not how the patty tasted.

Strengths

Coherent Italian bistro construction
Competent execution
Solid overall

Weaknesses

Too much texture across the whole burger
Firm, seeded bun compounds rather than settles it
Doneness inconsistent across two burgers

Why this score

The construction is sound and the execution is competent, and on the menu this should be a better burger than it eats.

What undoes it is that every component adds texture and nothing moderates it, so a burger with no flavor fault still fails to hold together. The inconsistent doneness across two plates does not help.