Prime 16 Restaurant Brings Its Burgers And Craft Beer To Pelham

While we ate at the bar at new Prime 16 in Pelham, the chalkboard beer list was removed from the wall twice for updates, a two-person operation involving one to write, one to hold the board steady. The 20-deep list leans toward breweries in and around New York, such as Spider Bite (Long Island), Gun Hill (Bronx), Yonkers, Half Full (Stamford, Connecticut), Two Roads (Stratford, Connecticut), and Southern Tier (Western New York). If you’re my friend on Untappd, you know I’m big into local beer. But it was a beer from Ballast Point Brewing Company in San Diego—Victory at Sea Coffee Vanilla Imperial Porter—that ultimately won my heart (and a 98 “world class” score on Beer Advocate). Explore the list during happy hour, with half-price drafts and half-off wings (get them with chipotle agave sauce), and munch on candied bacon with Cajun cayenne seasoning.

This is the third Prime 16 (the others are in Connecticut). Headlining along with the beer are gourmet burgers made from Angus beef with no added hormones, no antibiotics, and made from cows fed non-GMO vegetarian feed. Of the eight burgers here (there are 16 in New Haven—hence the name), I went with the Maui Burger—the server talked it up so well that I ignored my skepticism about the pineapple. I’m glad I did, as the combo of pepper jack cheese, smoked applewood bacon, pickled red onion, romaine, and grilled pineapple, with chipotle mayo, was hard to put down. Our other choice, a mushroom and pecan veggie burger topped with Swiss cheese, baby spinach, and tomato, with a side truffle aioli, gets points for being house-made, but crumbled upon contact. (If you’re looking for a non-veg alternative to red meat, there’s a Buffalo sauce–basted turkey burger with blue cheese and celery carrot coleslaw.) Making up the rest of the 16 dishes (intentionally or not) are four sandwiches and four salads, and there’s also a kids’ menu.

Yes, you can bring the kids. The whole town was there.

Looking back, why did I not try the pretzel: two soft pretzels, topped with smoked Hawaiian sea salt and served with a choice of mustards, with the option to add cheese sauce for a very retro 95 cents? Or the fried-egg-topped Cowboy burger? Or the Pickle Back with American cheese and spicy dill pickle chips, basted with bourbon stout barbeque sauce? A better vegetarian option might have been grilled goat cheese and mozzarella with pesto, avocado, and baby spinach on multigrain. And I hear raves about the BLT. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

We’ll be back.

Prime 16
156 Fifth Ave
Pelham
(914) 576-0700; prime16.com

Hungry for more? Check out our shortlist of Westchester’s 7 most creative and crazy burgers