by Diego Lomeli

It’s easy to mock vegan plant-based alternatives in comparison to the traditional taste and texture of American dishes.

If you’re not vegan, choosing a more expensive 100% plant-based burger over a cheaper real-meat burger seems unreasonable.

Monty’s Good Burger aims to provide the rich taste of real meat in a healthy plant based alternative, and although the presentation and aesthetic of the food itself is clearly of great quality, there were certain flawed aspects within the taste of the meat itself.

Upon arriving, you’re presented with a vibrant and colorful menu display up to of the counter. The menu consists of a relatively simple single or double patty option, followed by your customizable choice of follow your heart cheese (their name, not mine), house spread, lettuce, tomato, pickles and grilled onions on Bosch Bakery potato buns. You can also choose between Julienne Fries or Tater tots, accompanied by 1 of the 5 dipping sauces.

As for beverages, you can choose between sparkling regular or strawberry lemonade, iced tea, an Arnold Palmer or a serving of Monty’s organic cane sugar craft soda, which comes in a variety of flavors.

I found the strawberry lemonade, although a great compliment to the meal, overwhelming at times.

Aesthetically, you could easily mistake Monty’s Good Burger signature Impossible, produced by Impossible Foods, as any other burger you’d find at a classic American diner. From a distance, it looks like a plastic model.

The Julienne Fries were crisp and golden, as you would expect good quality fries to taste. Their thinness and length was a bit comical, but they were good overall.

The patty itself was made to replicate the taste of a real beef patty, and although the burger itself had decently enjoyable taste, it was difficult trying to pick out the flavor of the patty among every other ingredient.

There’s a distinct taste that real beef hamburgers have that isn’t present in the Impossible burger. The texture is close, but it’s the taste that is missing.

For an almost $20 total, I wouldn’t say that the Impossible burger with fries and a drink is a preferable alternative to the real thing.

In other words, either you pay for your college tuition, or you pay for a meal at Monty’s.

Overall, Monty’s Good Burger by no means serves its customers bland vegan food, but it’s not the kind of taste you could potentially get out of a well made real beef patty. This, combined with a generally more expensive price range makes Monty’s Good Burger a close second among traditional burger joints.