Flip Side – Spiciest Dish in Columbus Series

A wise man once said, “I’d gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” That’s a good way to get booted from a restaurant.

Flip Side has been on our list for a while now, lingering because spicy burgers tend to be burgers with a faint hint of spice due to cheese or almost none at all. Their Easton location has re-opened and you can find them in other parts of Ohio, mainly in the Northeast. Known primarily for their burgers but also for their shakes, Flip Side 15 burgers on their menu including Impossible patties, turkey, bison and regular ol’ beef. We wandered to Flip Side this week to try out some of their spicy burger offerings. Disclaimer: We’re still in takeout mode, so the burgers look a bit compressed. Do not judge on the images alone!

Chili Pepper Burger

First up was the Chili Pepper Burger: pickled jalapeno / pepper jack cheese / crispy chili onion rings / sriracha / smoked chili ketchup. The ingredient list alone is not much to look at from a spicy perspective, but when you name something the “chili pepper burger” my expectations go pretty high. At the very least, something like this should clock in at the middle of our list. Nope. First bite in and there was pretty much nothing. The tiniest of tingles from the pickled jalapeño, but that was more from the vinegar itself than the heat of any of the peppers. The pepper jack cheese is barely noticeable and the chili ketchup didn’t even register on my heat scale. The Lady of the Farm was also unphased, flipping this burger down toward the bottom of our spiciest list. Did I build it up too much in my head? Did I expect too much from the Chili Pepper Burger? It seems so. I’ll take the blame on that one.

Uncle Jimmy

The second burger of the night was the “Uncle Jimmy” with: peanut butter / applewood bacon / habanero pepper jelly. Initially, I passed over this one, but the Lady of the Farm insisted it was worth a try due to its uniqueness. We had gone splitsies on the Chilly Pepper Burger (intentional re-naming), so we did the same with the Uncle Jimmy. I’d never had peanut butter on a burger before, but that ingredient alone made this one of the more interesting burgers I’ve had. The combos of fat between the bacon and the peanut butter create a salty, somewhat sweet, creamy and crunchy topping. That’s when the super sneaky habanero pepper jelly rides on in, stabs you in your spicy receptors and warms you up a little. When I say sneaky, I’m talking like eight cell phones, no one saw this coming, but accidentally turns itself in kind of sneaky. All of the sweet and saltiness in the burger grabs enough of your attention at first that the habanero rides the wave and lands with a comfortable, but fun, level of spiciness. No sniffles or sweat, but the heat is there at a low and slow pace that never really peaks, leaning more on the sweetness aspect of the jelly. For the Lady of the Farm, the flavor combos and unique heat put this burger toward the top of her favorite spiciest dishes in terms of tastiness.

That said, this is a Spicy Lite at best. It’s possible that the El Jefe burger packs a bit more of a punch, but that would rely solely on the chorizo and based on the levels of heat from the above burgers it’s doubtful. That in mind, we’re placing Flip Side at #60 on our list, above Firdou’s Tunisian Chicken and below The Crafty Pint and their Ghost Pepper Bison Burger. It seems like the only burger that will ever get toward the top of our list is the once-a-year burger from Winking Lizard when they pull out their “super hot” menu. We’ll give that a shot later this year, but for now, we’ll just wander away from the burger scene. Now if only I could track down those Kobe Beef Corn Dogs they are rumored to have.

We’d love to see any spicy burger concoctions you come up with this summer, so feel free to send those along!

You can find Flip Side in Easton at 3945 Easton Station, Columbus, OH 43219.

Look below for more in our spiciest dish in Columbus series and hit us up if you have any suggestions that are not already on our list!

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