Cow & Cheese

I am thrilled to report that Cow & Cheese (https://www.facebook.com/cowandcheese), Orlando’s newest burger establishment, officially opened TODAY (Friday, December 1st) in Maitland, and it is GOOD.  People, I have been waiting over a year to write this review!  If you like your burgers smashed on the flattop grill, full of flavor, with crispy edges, melted cheese, and deeply caramelized onions, this is the place for you.  I am a convert to smash-style burgers, and this is one of the best I’ve ever tried anywhere, not just in the Orlando area.

Cow & Cheese is the latest restaurant in the growing empire of Kwame Boakye, the owner-operator of the beloved Chicken Fire in Orlando’s Milk District (a personal favorite of mine since his earliest food truck days) and That Wing Spot south of downtown Orlando.  Now open in a convenient location along Highway 17-92 in Maitland, Kwame is keeping his latest menu simple, with four burger variations, crinkle-cut fries, and Stubborn brand craft sodas.

Here’s a shot of the menu, above the counter where you place your order on a touch-screen.  If it is too small to read, right-click the image below and open it in a new tab for a larger photo.

But first, I need to flash back a little over a year.  Kwame first previewed Cow & Cheese in a series of three pop-up events at his Chicken Fire restaurant back in 2022, and I was lucky to be able to attend one of them, last August.  I ordered The Doc ($9), an Oklahoma-style burger, featuring “thinly sliced onions smashed into two angus beef patties, each topped with premium American cheese, CC sauce, and deeply caramelized onions, all on a fresh baked toasted brioche bun.”  That’s poetry to my ears and to my soul, and the actual Doc burger was poetry to my mouth:It looks messy, because it IS messy.  But I like a lot of stuff on my burgers, specifically melty American cheese, cooked onions (so much more pleasant than raw onions), and a nice sauce or condiment to bring it all together.  I’ve had dry, bland, sad smash-style burgers that taste like burning, but this one definitely tasted like high quality beef, done well but not “well done,” and it had a nice texture from the edges crisping up.  All the ingredients harmonized together to make a damn tasty burger, and I hoped against hope that Kwame would open Cow & Cheese in a permanent location sooner rather than later.

These were the crinkle-cut fries, which you can never go wrong with.  I got a little ramekin of creamy, zingy CC sauce (a little thinner and not quite as tangy as the delightful soul sauce from Chicken Fire) to dip them in.

And for those of you who don’t like your burgers covered with stuff, you are not alone.  My wife is the exact same way, but don’t worry — the staff at the Cow & Cheese pop-up made her a plain burger, which she devoured with gusto, along with those fries (still hot even after getting them home).   Long-time Saboscrivner subscribers may recognize our green placemats, which we’ve had since 2009.  I can’t stand them, because they have teeny tiny holes all over them, so they do absolutely nothing to protect our table from crumbs, spills, and stains.  Thanks for nothing, Crate and Barrel!

But I digress.  Fast-forwarding back to this past week, Kwame contacted me on Facebook and invited me to a special Friends and Family preview evening at Cow & Cheese, a few days before Friday’s grand opening to the general public.  This was a way for his staff to get comfortable with the cooking and serving processes for a forgiving crowd, but they were all extremely friendly, welcoming, and at the top of their game with customer service.  Just like at Chicken Fire, the food is great, but Kwame and his crew always make me feel valued.  Not every local restaurant does this, but it sure makes a difference!

As a result, I must now make a disclaimer that all the food I received at the Friends and Family preview was complimentary.  I did not pay for anything in the next part of this review, nor was I asked to write a good review in exchange for the free food.  I am writing a good review because the food was absolutely delicious, and it is a terrific value, especially for the Maitland area.  And yes, in case you were wondering, I will absolutely return.  But even more than the stellar burgers (which are some of the best in the Orlando area), I think the world of Kwame Boakye and want to support him any way I can.  He is a skilled entrepreneur and talented chef who treats all people the way he would want to be treated, from his own staff to a bald, bearded, bearlike blogger who went crazy for his spicy chicken back in 2019 and became a semi-regular customer ever since.  The dude always recognizes me, even when I show up in an N95 mask, even when months have passed since my last visit!  I get the distinct impression he remembers all his customers.  That’s the kind of guy he is — a good man doing a great job in a very hard business.  I could not be happier to see him succeed, nor to help boost the signal for him in my own small way.  Good things don’t happen to good people nearly often enough.

Anyway, gushing aside, here is the aforementioned Stubborn soda fountain, so we have moved on to more gushing.  I happen to like the root beer, the pineapple cream soda, and the agave vanilla cream soda.  At the preview, I sipped on those three flavors as I waited for my orders to be ready.  Separately, not together, I should add, but you may want to play soda jerk chemist and mix them together to create your own crazy combinations.   

I returned to my old favorite cheeseburger from the pop-up, The Doc (still making it funky enough!), which I chowed down on, hot and fresh, in the restaurant.  By the way, those crispy edges on the meat are due to a chemical process called the Maillard reaction that gives browned foods like grilled meats, toasted bread, roasted vegetables, caramelized onions, and even coffee their distinctive, delicious flavors.  You need to start out with dry raw ingredients (pat your meat dry) and very high temperatures, and the proteins and sugars will go buck wild and make things taste like heaven.  As always, Serious Eats does a much better job explaining the science behind the Maillard reaction better than I can, so give it a read.  SCIENCE! And it works so well, because these burger patties had lacy, delicate, crispy corners and edges that added to the melange of flavors and textures.  It makes such a difference that the fresh brioche buns are lightly toasted on the same cooking surface, for that extra crispy firmness to hold up against the CC sauce and other toppings.  On this Doc burger, I also requested kosher dill pickle chips (slices, not pickle-flavored potato chips), which were fine, but I thought they were unnecessary.  I prefer pickles with Kwame’s incendiary hot chicken at Chicken Fire, dulling the burn with their cool, sour saltiness, but that’s just me, and I could be wrong.

Unfortunately the fryer was malfunctioning on the Friends and Family Night, or you can bet I would have gotten another order of those crinkle-cut fries, this time topped with beer cheese, CC sauce, and caramelized onions, almost like the legendary Animal Style fries at California’s cult fast food chain, In-N-Out Burger.  (I happen to love In-N-Out, but it isn’t nearly as good as this singular, locally owned and operated restaurant.)  I’ll just have to come back for the fries, which won’t take me long.

Kwame insisted I don’t leave empty-handed on that memorable evening, so I brought home another Doc and a Triple Cow x Triple Cheese.  Both burgers normally cost $9 each, and the major difference is that the Doc is only two burger patties and the Triple Cow is three, but the Doc has the onions pressed into the cooking meat, while the Triple Cow doesn’t.  If you are torn, you can always order the Triple Cow x Triple Cheese and pay the reasonable $2.50 upcharge for deeply caramelized onions on it.  Those onions make such a difference, taking something already brilliant to the next level.  That’s probably what I will do on future visits.  And if you’ve ever tried caramelizing onions at home, you know it takes a stupidly long time for the Maillard reaction to occur — far longer than most recipes are willing to admit!  You might as well leave it to the professionals and enjoy their hard work and patience.
Somehow, I ate one of these that same night, of course standing up over my kitchen counter, and wolfed the other one down the following day.  It was just as good, by the way.

I can’t say enough good things about Cow & Cheese or its owner, Kwame Boakye, and not just because he invited me to the Friends and Family preview.  As you can see, these burgers and fries are well worth the extremely reasonable prices.  Maitland is a lot closer to us than Chicken Fire, out on the corner of East Colonial and Bumby, so I’m sure I will make the trek semi-regularly, whenever we feel like tasty burgers that have undergone the Maillard reaction.  There are a few burger chains that specialize in these same smash-style burgers, including a popular national chain just down the road from Cow & Cheese, in Winter Park.  You’ve probably tried it before, especially if you’re hanging on my every word in this review.  It rhymes with “Snake Wack.”  Don’t even bother returning to “Snake Wack” for your next burger and fries craving.  Instead, support a brand-new, one-of-a-kind, Black-owned local business where the food is even better, and where the owner will probably remember your name and face with every visit and make you feel like a friend.