Oyster bar’s only burger is worth the dive

Opened in January near the Benbrook Traffic Circle, The Dive Oyster Bar is on its way to becoming as known for burgers as it is for seafood. During a recent visit, every table in the restaurant had at least one burger on it, and the place was jammed.

It’s weird for a seafood joint to get this much mileage out of a burger, but maybe it’s karma. The building’s previous occupant, Salsa Fuego, was a Mexican restaurant also known for outstanding burgers.

The burger: Executive chef Josh Rangel, who cut his teeth as a sous-chef at Waters Bonnell’s Coastal Cuisine, does exactly one burger — a best-of-both-worlds beauty that combines old-fashioned sensibility with cheffy new twists.

The patty: Here’s where Rangel applies an old-school approach. The 6-ounce patty is simple: 80/20 USDA chuck, hand-formed and grilled, not on a flat-top but on an actual kitchen grill. The result is a patty with a smoky flavor and crusty exterior — think cookouts.

According to the menu, you can have it prepared one of two ways: well done or “pink.” Even though we requested pink, we only found a few traces of it, yet the patty retained a good amount of juiciness. We loved the seasoning — a combination of salt, pepper, garlic powder and onion powder.

The bun: More and more restaurants are using brioche buns for burgers, the Dive included. From Alpha Baking Co., the buns were nicely toasted and had a likable, slightly buttery flavor.

The toppings: What a smartly constructed burger. While many places go for top-heavy burgers, dumping all the ingredients on the patty, here the lettuce, sliced tomatoes and rings of onions were placed between the patty and bottom bun. This allowed more legroom at the top.

The top was reserved for two sauces — a faintly spicy sesame aioli and a robust steak sauce, both house-made — that were vastly different from one another but flowed together seamlessly.

The sides: Most people opt for the thick, hand-cut fries, and that’s not a bad way to go. But we prefer the onion rings, whose addicting buttermilk batter, seasoned with cayenne and garlic powder, had us pressing the crumbs to our fingers and licking them clean. Maybe that was TMI.

The verdict: A good old-school burger with a few cool new-school twists. And get the onion rings.

3520 Alta Mere Drive, Fort Worth. 817-560-3483. Facebook: The Dive Oyster Bar. Hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

This story was originally published May 19, 2016 at 2:22 PM with the headline "Oyster bar’s only burger is worth the dive."