Shake Shack's Clubhouse Pimento Cheese Burger Is the Best Thing on Their Menu Right Now

The Shake Shack Clubhouse Pimento Cheese Burger has been on the menu for a while now and it keeps not getting the attention it deserves. It shows up, it moves units, it gets solid word-of-mouth, and then it gets overshadowed by whatever limited collaboration or novelty burger lands that quarter. This is a correction.

The Clubhouse Pimento Cheese Burger is the best regular menu item Shake Shack has right now. That is a real statement and we are standing behind it.

What Is In It

The burger is a SmashBurger-style patty on a potato bun, topped with house-made pimento cheese, crispy bacon, and shredded lettuce. The pimento cheese is not the stuff from a tub at the grocery store. Shake Shack makes it in-house with sharp cheddar, cream cheese, diced pimentos, and a seasoning blend that sits somewhere between tangy and gently spicy. It gets melted over the patty so it becomes almost a sauce rather than a thick slab of cheese.

Shake Shack uses 100% Angus beef with no hormones or antibiotics ever. The patties are smash-cooked on a flat top, which means they have more surface contact with the grill and develop a better crust than burgers that are cooked in a looser, rounder form. You taste the char. Not in a burnt way - in a way that adds complexity to the beef.

The Pimento Cheese Does Most of the Work

Pimento cheese has been having a cultural moment in fast food and casual dining for a few years now. It originated as a Southern staple, a spread made from grated cheese, mayonnaise, and pimento peppers, served on crackers or white bread at church potlucks and front porches from Virginia to Texas. It is not a fancy ingredient. That is exactly why it works so well at a chain like Shake Shack.

The version on this burger is genuinely good. It is sharper and more assertive than the version you would find at a lot of chain restaurants, which tend to make pimento cheese mild enough to not offend anyone. Shake Shack leaned into the sharpness and it makes the burger taste more complete. The cheese is doing actual flavor work rather than just adding creaminess.

The pimento peppers in the cheese provide a very mild heat that you notice more as a lingering warmth than an upfront spice. It does not make the burger spicy. It makes it interesting.

The Bacon

Crispy bacon on a smash burger sounds redundant at first. You already have a well-crusted patty and a rich, fatty cheese. Adding more fat and crunch seems like overkill. It is not overkill. The bacon adds a smokiness that neither the beef nor the cheese provides, and the crunch contrast against the soft bun and melted cheese is genuinely satisfying.

The bacon at Shake Shack runs crispy rather than chewy, which is the correct approach for a burger. Chewy bacon slides out of a burger when you bite it. Crispy bacon stays where you put it.

The Bun

The potato bun Shake Shack uses is softer and slightly sweeter than a standard brioche bun, and it holds up better under the weight and moisture of the toppings. This is a burger that generates some juice from the pimento cheese and the patty, and the bun manages it without disintegrating by the second bite. That is not nothing.

How to Order It

Get it with the house-made lemonade. The lemonade at Shake Shack is freshly squeezed and the tartness cuts through the richness of the burger in a way that soda does not. If the line for shakes is short, the salted caramel milkshake pairs well with the pimento cheese. Otherwise, lemonade.

Skip the crinkle fries if you are not fully committed to eating everything. Get a small fries or skip them entirely. The burger is filling on its own and the fries, while good, are not good enough to justify overordering.

The Verdict

If you are at a Shake Shack and you are not sure what to order, order this. It is the best demonstration of what the chain does well: quality ingredients, a specific regional flavor reference executed with care, and a burger construction that makes sense from the first bite to the last. It is not the flashiest thing on the menu but it is the most consistently satisfying. That counts for a lot.

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