Texas woman orders Impossible plant-based burger at restaurant. Then it takes forever to come out—that’s just the start

Going back to a beloved restaurant after years of not having tried it always carries some measure of risk. Menus change, staff members change, and the culinary experience a person might remember fondly may no longer exist.

One Texas woman returned to her favorite chain for the first time in a while. And she learned this lesson the hard way.

‘I almost broke my teeth'

Houston content creator Esmie (@winelady51) shared a disappointing dining experience she'd had. Specifically, she was not pleased with her meal at the Whiskey Cake Kitchen & Bar location in The Woodlands, Texas. Her video has since accumulated approximately a thousand views.

Esmie explained she's had a long history with Whiskey Cake, having first tried the Katy, Texas location years earlier. She'd loved the plant-based Impossible Burger enough to keep coming back. However, dining with her boyfriend this time at The Woodlands location, she said their food took an unusually long time to come out and that staff served people who'd been seated after them.

“I was like, ‘Hey, I was just wondering, they got their food before we did,'” Esmie said, recalling an exchange with her server. “And then she goes, ‘Oh, because your burger, it takes a little bit longer to cook. We just got to make sure that it cooks thoroughly.'”

But this explanation made Esmie nervous.

‘You are allowed to eat raw vegetables'

“I mentioned to my boyfriend … ‘I hope they don't make it charcoal,'” Esmie said. “Because I don't like it charcoaled. I like my meat to be medium rare, even though it's not real meat. But it's okay to have a plant-based burger that's medium rare. You are allowed to eat raw vegetables.”

Unfortunately, when the burger arrived, Esmie's worst fears were confirmed. In her video, she opened a takeout box with her meal from the restaurant, showing bread that was “hard” and “burnt” before moving on to the rest of the food.

 “You see this, look at this, all that burnt there, I almost broke my teeth,” she said, showing the patty to the camera. “This is charcoal. And look at the patty, it's completely thin.”

Esmie said she brought the burger home specifically to document it. She told the server directly that the patty had been overcooked. Apparently, the server never offered her a discount or a new serving of food.

“[The server] was like, oh, I'm so sorry, I'll just let the cook know,” Esmie said. “She still … charged us money. … It was overly priced to begin with.”

Esmie made it clear that her qualms with Whiskey Cake were location-specific, rather than directed at the franchise as a whole.

“If I ever was to go back to Whiskey Cake, I would definitely go back to the one in Katy,” she finished. “This location, the one in Woodlands… Horrible, horrible job. Whiskey Cake, please do better.”

@winelady51 #whiskeycakethewoodlands #plantbasedburger #unsatisfiedcustomer #restaurant ♬ original sound – Esmie-5

Was Esmie's patty actually overcooked, or was it done correctly?

Impossible Foods' own cooking guidance states that the “Impossible Burger is fully cooked when the internal temperature reaches 160ºF.” This is the same internal temperature for cooking well-done ground beef, which means it's higher than the benchmark for Esmie's desired “medium rare.”

However, several culinary sources indicate cooking a plant-based patty at well-done or medium rare is not necessarily ideal.

According to a recipe breakdown from America's Test Kitchen, cited by Conscious Cooking, plant-based meat cooked to a true medium-rare (125 degrees) turns out “mushy and pasty,” while cooking it all the way to well-done (160 degrees) produces an “unpleasantly bouncy, chewy texture.” Conscious Cooking “found medium doneness (130 to 135 degrees) to be the sweet spot for tender, juicy meat.”

MyKitchenHacks also reports that unlike traditional beef, plant-based patties don't carry the same raw-meat food safety risk, meaning the higher target temperature is largely a manufacturer recommendation rather than a hard food-safety requirement.

Buzz News has reached out to Whiskey Cake Kitchen & Bar via email, as well as Esmie via TikTok comment.