Bucu Burger Bar and Bakery, Paramus – Review

by Alice Magdziak • April 13, 2011 • Bergen, Burger Mania, Food • Comments (0) • 3220

Move over Bobby Flay, there’s a better burger in Paramus. 3/31/2014 UPDATE: Sadly, Bucu has closed. They announced it on their Facebook page in December 2013.

Bucu Burger Bar and Bakery, Route 4, Paramus

We’ve been reading about Bucu Burger Bar and Bakery for a few months now. Here, here and here. In fact, it turns out that they’ve only been open for about two months so we must have been hearing about them since their grand opening.

Normally, I am skeptical about a place that gets extremely high marks from every single reviewer. So, I went in expecting to be underwhelmed. I mean, really, who can’t make fried meat with cheese and a good bun taste delicious? It’s nearly impossible to make a BAD burger if you start with good ingredients.

So, according to all these reviews I’ve been reading, Bucu Burger Bar gets their meat from the famous Pat LaFrieda Meat Purveyors. That makes me want to go. Period.

If you’ve watched any show about burgers or steaks from New York or New Jersey, you’ve seen Pat, Sr. or Pat, Jr. working in North Bergen making their special blends of ground meat. Everybody who’s anybody gets their meat from Pat LaFrieda.

So, we picked a very rainy night to head over to Route 4 in Paramus. There were three of us so we could get lots of different items. The place is kind of tucked back in the middle of a shopping plaza but the light blue BUCU neon shown brightly even in the rain. Bucu is short for “BU”-rgers and “CU”-pcakes. We figured this out when we saw the logo which is a stylized half-burger, half-cupcake. Pretty cool design.

Walking in, we were greeted by an interior of brown and blue walls and seating. Normally, burger places are neon and bright colored affairs. This seemed more stately. We liked it. It seems like someone thought out every detail.

The menu is easy to peruse. The desserts are displayed right out front so they’re easy to read about and TRY to decide on just one.

There aren’t too many items on the menu. There’s nothing worse than having to order at a counter while being blind-sided by hundreds of choices. Clearly, you’re here for burgers, hot dogs, sandwiches and fries. And, that’s basically all you’ll see on the menu.

Bucu Interior

We order. $39 for three people’s sandwiches, sides and drinks. Nice prices!

We sampled lots of things on the menu. We need to go back to try everything else later. If everything is as good as the items we ordered, we’re in for several more roundtables of treats.

Our Entrees

Our run-down starting at the front and working back.

Plain dog: deep-fried with a good snap and nice potato bun. The “Pig-Out” Burger: delicious burger with pulled pork, jalapeno jack cheese and horseradish slaw—amazing play of sweet, salty and tangy that was wonderful. Fries: Good, standard crispy and flavorful.

Create-your-own burger with feta cheese and Bucu sauce (a mayo-thousand island kind of sauce) on ciabatta: the bread perfectly collected all the juicy goodness from the sauce and burger and I’ll be getting feta cheese on all my burgers from now on… wow! Sweet potato waffle fries: not greasy at all and the waffle is an inspired idea for sweet potato fries because it keeps them crispy and perfect.

Create-your-own burger with Bucu sauce on the side and pepper jack cheese and onion on ciabatta: simply amazing, salty and juicy, again the ciabatta keeps everything in check. All-the-way hot dog: chili is excellent here! Kettle chips with salt, pepper and vinegar: these almost made me wish I hadn’t gotten the sweet potato waffle fries… I’m getting these next time.

Whew! That was a lot of food. But, we intrepid reviewers needed to check out the desserts, too, so we soldiered on.

Strawberry with Cap’n Crunch and a Coconut Cupcake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Oatmeal Cookie with Chocolate Ice Cream Sandwich

As good as all the sandwiches and fries were, it’s possible that the desserts were even better. Yes, I said it. The strawberry ice cream smelled like strawberries from across the table and in the midst of burger and fries smells, that’s how fresh and chock-full-o-strawberry it was. The Cap’n Crunch was swirled throughout the ice cream. One slight problem was an extremely weak plastic spoon which made eating the thick ice cream somewhat difficult. A minor flaw, overall. The cupcake was just divine. That’s all that can be said about it.

The ice cream sandwich… oh, the ice cream sandwich. The cookies were HUGE and soft. The ice cream was not too solid so it was easy to bite into but not soft enough that it all squeezed out too fast. This is the best dessert I’ve ever eaten. Literally.

So, basically, you just need to go to Bucu Burger Bar and Bakery. Today. The prices are amazing for the quality and quantity of food you get. And, the desserts aren’t an afterthought. They are just as good as the meals.

One more thing… remember how I said that each detail seemed well thought out? Well, check out these coffee cup lids.