Philadelphia Weekly

Of all the great early Nintendo games--Mike Tyson's Punch Out, Adventure Island, Hoops, Anticipation, Blades of Steel--Burgertime will always hold a special place in my heart. If you were a budding food freak in the '80s, gaming didn't get better.

Beef, lettuce, bun was the holy trinity of the Burgertime burger. Fries and ice cream were bonus points, but extra condiments were actually the villains, ambulatory pickles and eggs you could stun with a pepper shaker. It was a simpler time.

If the game were remade for 2008, there would have to be Kobe and Wagyu and Angus patties, hydroponically grown lettuce and 11-grain buns baked by blind monks.

Color me nostalgic. When it comes to the burger I'm a purist-- at least I always thought I was. But all it took was one bite of Sketch's buttery Kobe jawbuster smothered in chunky green chili and Thai peanut sauces to totally challenge my entire burger belief system. Existential meltdown commencing.

East of the El and into the Fish, this Girard Ave. burger bar flips four patties and offers four sauces, five toppings and five cheeses. That's 400 different burger combinations--more when you include the standard lettuce and tomato and the carb counter's option to get your burger on a bed of salad greens.

Fishtown and Northern Liberties are hardly short on good burgers, but Sketch's co-captains Phyllis Farquhar, who owns nearby Canvas Coffee, and Megan Roberts are doing "burger without the bar." Their 8-ounce patties are hand-formed each morning, chilled (but not frozen) and cooked to order on a flattop.

The menu includes this proviso for the impatient: "Everything on the menu is made fresh to order, so give us a little bit of time and don't rush a good thing." Tucked into the salvaged church pew booths, the scrappy crowd obliges, doodling on recycled slate chalkboards mounted to the shake shack's Day-Glo walls.

Figure 15 to 20 minutes for the cashier/waitress to deliver the beef. Hugged by Le Bus brioche, the classic burger (an 80/20 blend of hormone-free sirloin) was everything a burger should be: juicy, warm, pink, jacked with umami. The Snake River Farms American Kobe--a deal for $9.60--brought the same experience, only enhanced exponentially, like seeing the Eagles in hi-def.

There's a killer smashed onion burger I got layered with chipotle and horseradish cheddar; thin-slice onions are pressed directly into the patty. The brown sugar and lime-marinated grilled chicken sandwich with the peanut sauce echoed Indonesian satay. The turkey burger was dangerously undercooked--but so satisfying with a smear of hot-and-cool harissa aioli, I didn't even notice till I was halfway through and saw its glistening pink core.

Roberts is a vegetarian, and her kind (as well as vegans) are well cared for at Sketch. In addition to classic milkshakes, the spot blends dairy-free vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, mint-chip and pistachio ones with Brooklyn-based Klein's Kosher ice cream and soy milk.

There's vegan soy cheese, and Vegenaise (vegan mayo) serves as the base for Sketch's five sauces. They make their own seitan in-house. One night seitan fajitas were on special, though they were probably the vilest thing I've put in my mouth in the last year. The squishy seitan strips actually squeaked when I chewed. It was like eating a mouse.

Nothing but love for the vegan burger, though. Ground lentils, white and kidney beans, white and wild rice, quinoa, celery, carrots, onions and potatoes form the pan-seared patty bound with vital wheat gluten and served on egg- and butter-free Le Bus ciabatta. Instead of fake meat it tasted like nutty grains and slow-cooked vegetables.

In the place of fries, Sketch burgers prefer the company of Utz cheese doodles or tortilla chips for the vegans. I get the cheese doodle/art doodle wink-wink, but a burger without its BFF looks the way Jill Biden claps: weird. Even Burgertime had the good sense to know that.