Momofuku Shrimp Stack

For Shake Shack addicts like us, this week is pretty special. To celebrate the 10th birthday of the opening of the first Shake Shack in Madison Square Park, they are throwing a special weeklong event called "Decade of Shack" featuring a different chef collaboration burger every day, along with a giant party on Thursday, their actual birthday. In an ideal world, we'd stop by for lunch every day to get a burger, but unfortunately our schedules only permitted us to choose a couple of days. One of the days we knew we wanted to go was today.

Happy birthday Shake Shack!

Today's burger was designed by David Chang and called the Momofuku Shrimp Stack. Combine Momofuku and Shake Shack and of course, you get a line that Shake Shack has proclaimed the longest in their history. We tried to get there early but for a number of reasons (including lots of broken Citibikes), we were pretty far back in the very, very, very, very long line and worried that we wouldn't even get a burger. They only make 1,000 for sale every day (and therefore limit every customer to 2 special burgers each).

Long, long line

It was a legitimate concern, especially as the signs kept going up, counting down the number of burgers left. 500, 250, the burgers kept flying off the griddle. The staff did their best to placate the people standing in line, giving out free custard samples and trying to reassure people that they had a good chance to get a burger, but the line crawled much more slowly than usual. It's hard to be zen about the whole thing when you've been waiting for over 2 hours with only the possibility of getting a special burger. (More on that later.)

Burgers disappearing...

The longer we stayed in line, the more our order grew. We were originally planning to get 2 Shrimp Stack burgers and an order of fries, but by the time we got to the register, we had added cheese fries and a double ShackBurger. Standing in line for 3 hours can make you really, really hungry. But we were so glad that we were able to actually get a Shrimp Stack after all that waiting.

Shake Shack lunch feast

The Shrimp Stack consisted of a "Shack beef-blend cheeseburger topped with smoked and griddled shrimp patty, Momofuku Hozon sauce, Bibb lettuce, pickled onion and salted cucumber." This was a really interesting burger. We were expecting the shrimp patty to be much stronger in flavor and to dominate the burger, but it was quite subtle, adding seafood accents, but not overpowering it. A bite with the burger, shrimp patty, onions, cucumber, lettuce and sauce was an excellent one. Whenever you were missing one of those pieces, it just wasn't quite the same. This burger was a bit like a lighter and more refreshing version of a ShackBurger.

Momofuku Shrimp Stack

As good as the Shrimp Stack was, we still really love the ShackBurger and if we had to pick only one, we'd still pick that. It's on the short list of our favorite burgers ever. Something about the combination of that patty with cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickle, onion and Shack sauce is just perfection.

Our favorite ShackBurger

And now for the not so great part of the Decade of Shack. Our one major complaint about the whole thing was line management and crowd control. There were too many instances of people cutting the line, even paying to do it, and Shake Shack saying they could do nothing about it (or even condoning it in some tweets). Crowd control is difficult, but off the top of my head, I could think of a number of different ways that aspect of the process could have been planned better to combat those concerns. The most efficient one I could think of was a ticketing system, which would eliminate the issue of line-cutting and let people know exactly what their chances were of getting the coveted burger. Give out 1,000 tickets, 1 or 2 to each person. Solves the problem.

Whenever anything good is in limited supply and there's high demand, whether it's these lines, the Cronut line or even the Black Friday line at Best Buy, not handing out tickets and just making it first come, first serve whips everyone up into a frenzy and creates a phenomenon that people can't stop talking about. There were tons of tweets and articles about how crazy the line was today. I get that. Businesses want that. They want the buzz. But doing that uncontrolled is really a disservice to people who stood on line for over 3 hours, people who by the constant counts that the staff were doing should have gotten one, people who missed out on getting one because of all the people who cut in front of them, thinking only of themselves (or their wallets, in the case of the woman (can't call her a lady) who paid to cut the line and then tried to re-sell her "untouched" burger for $25 to people who missed out).

More people would get a taste if less people got to cheat...

It takes two, so it's not just the woman who paid to cut but the person who accepted the money without caring about all the people who shared the same waiting experience as he did. I know that a business can't regulate the ethical behavior of every single person in the line. But if you don't have the means or ability to stand guard and protect the interests of loyal customers who put in the time and energy to wait, then maybe something like giving out tickets is the best option so people don't get screwed over. After all, as they said, they want everyone to get a taste of a Decade of Shack. It's too bad that some people didn't get to because of what people like that woman did.

We've been loyal customers and fans of Shake Shack for years. We've tried the majority of the custards they've had over the past 4 years. We're not going to stop going but we would have been really unhappy if we had missed out because of the unsavory and rude actions of a few. It would have been really frustrating to be on line for 3 hours only to miss out and have to get the regular ShackBurger (as good as it is) that you could just get at any other Shack for a fraction of the wait time. There has to be a better way to keep things in order and let everyone who showed up get the experience they were meant to based on the time they arrived.

Burgers sold out while we were there ... Felt really bad for all the people who waited and didn't get one

The line speed and wait were so annoying that I briefly considered not going back later in the week for the other burgers, but ... no, too much of a Shack addict and this type of collaboration is only happening once. Hopefully next time people will just be a little less selfish and a little more considerate of their fellow line-waiters.

In the end, we waited approximately 201 minutes to place our order and then another 12 minutes for our food. It was a long time and with all the travel, the entire process took over 4.5 hours. That's a big time commitment, so we're really glad we were fortunate enough to get one of the burgers. Hopefully we'll be able to get some later in the week as well. We also want cake from the birthday celebration on Thursday but the party is in direct conflict with the kickoff of our other obsession, the World Cup. Can't wait for Thursday!