Author: /u/Penkala89

Houstonians, I don’t at all take this as representative of your local cuisine, but wow f**k the LiveFire Burger at the Houston airport. Amidst 22 hours of travel, multiple delays, and airlines losing half our luggage, the thing I’m most annoyed about was the sorry excuse for a burger there.

Ended up at IAH for a layover and decided to get a burger for a late lunch near the gate. Ordering was all done via tablets at the tables, but many of them were out of battery. Also the menu curiously featured several sections that ended up being empty if you tried to look through them. I decided to go with some sort of California burger with a slice of ham, avocado, cheese, and a chipotle aioli. The menu asked how well done you wanted the burger but it ended up not mattering because it was burnt, the heat seems to have been set too high. Also, the chipotle aioli was entirely absent, especially troublesome given the dry overdone patty.

It didn’t seem worth it to have them make a new burger but at least I wanted some of the sauce to make it a little palatable and dip the fries in. There’s no way to ask to communicate with a human being from the tablet interface so I found the bartender (one of only two people apparently working there) and explained the situation.

10 minutes later he comes back, “oh we’re out of the sauce.” It sure seems like that might have been useful info when ordering the burger, or at least they could have come back and let me know before just leaving out a key ingredient and hoping I wouldn’t notice. No offer of a refund or anything, just an offer to bring barbecue or tzatziki sauce instead (which aren’t really comparable sauces?).

I don’t expect airport food to be a mind-blowing culinary experience but this was exceptionally poor. I don’t entirely blame the cook either, the place was very understaffed and she probably isn’t getting paid enough to care about it.