Kuma Burgers

Kuma Burgers is the brainchild of Willet Feng, former sous chef at Oxheart, Houston’s temple of high-end vegetable-centric cuisine. While you won’t see the same kind of painstakingly lovely plates Feng turned out at Oxheart coming across the pass at this food-court burger counter, you will notice an uncommon attention to balance. Whether it’s the variegated waves of chile heat that weave the SPICY!!! Burger into a sandwich far more nuanced than its warning sign moniker, or the simpler pleasures of a perfectly tuned Texas-style cheeseburger (a steal at $5 for a basic model), the best options at Kuma are presented with all the care of a troop of tweezer-bearing chefs, but none of the frippery that implies. Aggressively griddled, loosely formed patties trail off into continental shelves of crisp beef, perfect for catching yolky runoff and maximizing crusty deliciousness. Each of the house-styled burgers has its own charms (you may want to add an extra patty to some, like the Texan Burger, in order to add just a bit of needed oomph), and the kitchen handles build-your-own requests with aplomb. Kuma offers a veggie burger — a densely meaty slab of breaded and fried soy-braised eggplant — and a “gluten free rice bun” that shows up as compressed discs of griddled rice. For dessert, it’s hard to top the black sesame shake.