There’s just nothing like a great burger, and lately, I’d been hearing reports that Corey’s Catsup & Mustard in Manchester serves some of the best in Connecticut. So I hauled my @$$ out there with a buddy to try them.
The moon was rising as we made our way to Manchester.
On this mercifully cool summer evening, we found these gentlemen enjoying a table outside,
but we followed this nice family inside.
Billed as a burger bar,
Catsup & Mustard is cheerful and brightly lit enough to be a perfectly good place to take your young ones. The Yankees were having a bad day at the office.
Fortunately, there were other distractions.
Nor was there a shortage of attractive young ladies.
Everyone seemed to be having a great time
and the staff could hardly have been nicer.
Before long, we had drafts of Ten Penny Ale in hand.
Studying our menus and chatting with our friendly neighbors, we learned that Catsup & Mustard is the second of three Manchester restaurants by Corey Wry, a Manchester native and culinary arts graduate of Johnson & Wales in Providence. A 1995 Manchester High School graduate, Wry has become something of a cottage industry for the town. Wry opened sandwich shop Pastrami & Wry in 2005, then opened burger bar Catsup & Mustard with friends Jesse Russo, Brian Dowd, Rich Tyrol and Tyler Miller, and recently opened steak-and-seafooder CW’s Chops ’n Catch.
We learned that the seven-ounce burgers are made from 100% choice beef which is ground fresh daily. Our neighbors’ Auntie Laurie’s burger, which came with housemade Blue Moon mustard, horseradish Cheddar, bacon, lettuce and tomato on a pretzel bun, looked so good that I asked for permission to photograph it.
Before long, we had burgers of our own to exclaim over. And what juicy, flavorful, perfectly cooked burgers they were! I ordered the basic burger with Jack cheese, lettuce and tomato on a sesame seed bun and paid extra for a fried egg and bacon.
You can see that my burger came with a pickle and a nice vinegary slaw.
My buddy ordered the P.S. I Love Pastrami burger, which came with extra lean pastrami, Swiss cheese, American cheese, creamy horseradish mustard, raw onion, lettuce and tomato on a hard roll.
Here’s a close-up of that wonderful exercise in excess
as well as a condiment platter.
Catsup & Mustard serves exotic flavors of fries, including plain, spicy Cajun, garlic Parmesan, sea salt and vinegar, and Cheddar and buffalo. What we tried were the cool ranch fries
and sweet potato fries with maple mayo,
both of which were wonderful.
Dessert didn’t happen because, frankly, we had no place to put it. But friendly owner Rich Tyrol swung by
and treated us to a couple of amazing shots that tasted like creamsicles.
Those were dessert enough!
Corey’s Catsup & Mustard, 623 Main Street, Manchester, 860-432-7755
catsupandmustard.com