Dining Out: Wahlburgers Summer Menu

I am a huge Wahlburgers fan and I always associate going there with summertime. Their very first location is in Hingham, MA which is right next to Hull, MA, the town where my father grew up and our family still has a home. I love stopping at Wahlburgers as I'm coming or going from Nantasket Beach. 

Just in time for my beach ritual, Wahlburgers has updated their menu with several new items for summer. I recently popped by the Fenway location to taste test the new additions. When I arrived, I was thrilled to see the patio is open! 

Now that so many other places have opened across the street - By Chloe, Blackbird Doughnuts - the people watching is excellent. 

Let's start with appetizers.

For those who love pulled pork, there is a brand new pulled pork slider, topped with housemade BBQ sauce, crispy onions, cheddar cheese and housemade pickles. 

The order comes with three sliders, great for sharing in a group.

I am not going to lie to you, when I saw these land on the table, I seriously considered abandoning my vegetarian ways and taking a huge bite. Those crispy onions! The melted cheese! I just wanted it. Badly. 

Wahlburgers has also updated their wing selection. Chef Paul's favorite ingredient to cook with is sriracha, so he has worked that into two of the wing sauces. There is sweet and spicy cranberry, which is actually a combination of Paul's sriracha with the cranberry sauce from Mark's Thanksgiving Day sandwich. If you don't want to choose a favorite Wahlberg brother, these wings pay homage to both. 

There is also a sriracha buffalo flavor and a chipotle chili flavor. Below are a few shots of the chipotle chili wings. 

These come with celery and ranch, which I always steal whenever my friends order wings. 

Moving onto the big guns, the burgers.

A few times a year Wahlburgers will introduce a special burger (you may remember I wrote about the Four Ring burger for the Super Bowl) and this summer they are bringing back an old favorite, the Surf 'N Turf burger. 

This bad boy is a Pat LaFrieda ground beef patty, bacon, cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato, lemon chive mayo and an ounce of fresh Maine lobster. Yes, people, lobster! 

The Surf 'N Turf burger was the brain child of Wahlburgers general manager Ashley Kelley, who I actually had the pleasure of meeting during my visit. She said, "What could be more 'summer in New England' than lobster?" 

Another new addition to the summer menu, and arguably the most important (as far as I'm concerned), is the two boozy frappes.

The first is called the Summer Peach Cobbler and is made with vanilla ice cream, graham crackers, cherry vodka and peach liqueur. 

If you have been reading Pop.Bop.Shop. for a while, you know I am not much of a fruit person. However, I took one sip of this frappe and I couldn't get over how delicious it was! It tasted like someone took a glass of cold milk and a fresh slice of cobbler, sent it spinning around in a blender and then poured it into a pint glass. 

I thought I might take one or two sips. I drained half the glass.

I also tried the Irish Pick Me Up, which is a play on an Irish coffee. It's coffee ice cream, blended with Jameson and Creme de Cocoa. In the Summer Peach Cobbler you can't taste the alcohol at all, in this one . . . holy smokes! As you sip, it burns (but in a good way). 

The coffee ice cream in the Irish Pick Me Up tastes of pure coffee and milk. It reminds me of the Brigham's coffee ice cream I ate growing up. I learned during this visit that Wahlburgers gets all of their ice cream from Nona's on the South Shore, which I go to all the time in Hingham. 

While I love trying all the new menu items, I couldn't leave without enjoying my go-to staples, starting with the portobello sandwich. 

This incredible vegetarian sandwich is stacked with a portobello mushroom cap, sautéed mushrooms, caramelized onions, cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato and Wahl sauce. 

I inhaled it! 

I had to have a side of tater tots. The Wahlburgers team was kind enough to give me half and half (plain and sweet potato) since I was agonizing over which to get. 

They also delivered me a potpourri of sauce choices - Wahl sauce, BBQ sauce, sriracha buffalo sauce, honey mustard and ranch. Basically, I was in heaven. 

The sriracha buffalo sauce was so good that I was bathing each and every tot in it, soaking up as much as I possibly could.

While I was chowing down, I was also dancing in my seat because Wahlburgers plays the best music. During dinner I heard tracks from Nelly, Adele, Mike Posner and Justin Bieber (I am obsessed with "Despacito" and I'm not embarrassed about it). 

If it's been a while since you stopped into a Wahlburgers, definitely plan to head in and check out all the amazingly delicious new items that have been added to the summer menu. I'm already thinking about when I can have more of that sriracha buffalo sauce!

*This post was created in collaboration with Wahlburgers. As always, all opinions are 100 percent my own.