Bellingham WA - Filling Station, report

I can finally provide information instead of asking for it! There’s a new eatery in Fairhaven, well relatively new. A couple months old. Called the Filling Station, you’ll find it in the old AW Bistro space. The demise of AW was a little sad, because it was the only 1/2 decent sushi nearby, and since I’ve tried most of the other places around town, I’ll likely have to get my fix in the bigger cities around us, or on my occasional trips to SoCal.

But I digress. Filling station is about gourmet burgers, with some fries, shakes, a couple salads, a chicken and salmon sandwich for the non red meat eaters, etc. Generally we head to Fiamma burger downtown for this type of fare, and have been fairly satisfied. But FS is closer, and it has been crazy packed most nights and crazy crazy packed on the weekends. So we gave it a spin tonight for takeout.

Collectively 4 of us only tried 2 of the burgers, what with dupe orders. But we were very pleased with the Chevy (bbq, fried shoestring onions, southwestern style) and the Jaguar (blue cheese, bacon onion jam, garlic aioli, arugula). In comparison to Fiamma, the beef on these was better. Better taste, meatier somehow, and with a nice season and a nice crust, both areas where Fiamma misses. The buns were more substantial too, and didn’t fall apart like Fiamma’s do. But these burgers tasted much much richer to us. More butter, more cheese, juicier patties. As one of my kids said, these were a once a month burger, whereas Fiamma you could eat 2x a month and still feel healthy. I agree that FS burgers were maybe 2x as unhealthy, but not sure if I would eat them as frequently as monthly. That’s still a whole lot of bad for you. Tasty though. I didn’t try the fries that came with, opting for cole slaw. That’ll be a leftover. I can tell you the fries are the fat ones that have more soft than crunch. Unlike Fiamma, with their skinny fries. I’d give it to Fiamma on the potatoes.

Not cheap. 4 burgers (they come with fries (or slaw)) set us back 53 before tip. Wish we had an in and out way up here! $20 for the 4 of us, and we probably would’ve been equally happy. Granted, those are very different burgers than these. These are gourmet, fancy, quality ingredients and clearly thought went into the combinations and toppings. I suspect they’ll do as well or better than the now 5 different pizza places in the 1 square mile of Fairhaven business center…

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