PATTY DOWN: Triple Rock Brewery & Alehouse

Name: Triple Rock Brewery & Alehouse
Location: 1920 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, CA 94704 (map)
Website: www.triplerock.com
Twitter: @TripleRockBeer

Come for the beer. Stay for the burgers.

That's how Triple Rock could market itself, not that the brewpub really needs to advertise. Students and senior citizens alike crowd its classy wooden interior seemingly throughout the week, especially when the 8.0% alcohol-by-volume Monkey Head arboreal ale flows from dark bottles each Thursday night.

For all of its homemade beer and enjoyable ambiance, though, Triple Rock's third rock might be its food.

Mill Grinder burger at Triple Rock

When you start getting hungry, you don't have to leave to find a restaurant with quality grub. Just ask for a menu and order the Mill Grinder ($7.25), a half-pound hamburger served with lettuce, tomatoes, onions and a paper-thin layer of mayonnaise.

(Note: You're out another $1.50 if you want to replace house coleslaw with fries, which is a pretty ridiculous concept. Burgers come with fries. This is America. How about serving them standard at $8.75 and giving a $1.50 discount to patrons who choose to sneak around a longstanding cultural icon?)

The burger, although a tad undercooked on the inside for a "medium-well" meal, delivered on most fronts. It tasted fresh, didn't fall apart with toppings heaped above it and was large enough for Triple Rock to serve it with a fork and knife. (As usual, those went unused.) It hit the proverbial spot.

The downsides were found in the details. The fries, nonetheless worth the $1.50 upgrade, were somewhat overcooked and slightly too salty. They actually did well on the burger (as they almost always do), where the salt seemed to fade into the rest of the flavors. Also, what good is a pickle wedge to a burger plate? Its presence put me in a pickle about what to do with it. For what it's worth, it should've been sliced into disks for convenient stacking or omitted entirely.

Triple Rock, apparently one of the country's first brewpubs, surely can thank its food for some of its longevity. And while a markedly better burger at Barney's is just five blocks away, a hand-crafted beer is within arm's reach here ... or should be, anyway.

Patty Down is an ongoing series of burger reviews. For other installments, click here.