Some burgers you can taste with your eyes. That was the case with the one I photographed at Broken Hearts Burger in Fairlee a few weeks ago, resisting its beefy aroma and lacework of crispy onions as I posed it this way and that. Finally, I tucked in: Each bite was like velvet, punctuated by pickles and the ooze of melted American cheese. Housemade Jump Back sauce — a tangy blend of ketchup, mayo and a proprietary touch — trickled down my hands. It took serious willpower not to finish it in one go.
This is the Heartbreaker, a burger meticulously crafted in 2022 by Matt Walker for the burger shop he opened in his hometown, and one that quickly took on a life of its own. Ground daily from local chuck, short rib and brisket and wedged into a house potato bun, the double smashburger eventually came to dominate each service.
Online reviewers called it the best burger in Vermont. Walker estimates that some days he turned out more than a hundred Heartbreakers as well as scores of the restaurant’s superlative shoestring fries. That pace relegated him to the kitchen and “very far away from what had been my career for the last 20 years,” said the 46-year-old, who spent decades managing bars.
“When we first opened, our goal was to create something special and singular,” Walker said. “The volume had gotten so huge, we found the quality slipping. Overwhelmingly, it felt like fast food.”
By last winter, Walker knew it was time for a pivot. He shuttered Broken Hearts Burger in January for a retool, removing the peg-letter menu board and repainting the white walls in cool tones. When Broken Hearts reopened in April 2025, gone were the takeout window, the creemees and the hot dogs. Three booths and a jukebox remained — but the counter had been recast as a sleek, underlit bar with a handful of royal-blue stools and a shimmering backdrop of gin, whiskey and amari.
The Heartbreaker also remained ($20 including fries) but nonchalantly so, listed alongside a longer rota of a dozen or so ever-changing small and large plates, cocktails, beer, and wine.
Walker calls the new Broken Hearts “punk dive bar meets steakhouse meets tropical cocktail bar.” Its roughly 20 seats are mostly reservation-only, allowing for a more manageable pace. “We really wanted the freedom to cook and serve the food and drink on a daily basis the way we wanted to,” said Walker, whose staff numbers roughly six people, about half of last year’s peak season.
The newly minted cocktail list taps Walker’s experience as a bar manager at places such as Misery Loves Co. in Winooski and the Richardson in Brooklyn. In sleepy Fairlee, diners can now sip a Japanese whiskey highball ($11), a sesame-kissed amaretto sour ($13) or one of a changing lineup of old-fashioneds.
On a late-July night, the sweet, sultry burn of a rum old-fashioned (Jay’s Old Fashioned, $16) was a robust chaser for the 7-ounce Bar Burger ($25), a slightly heftier, more poised cousin to the Heartbreaker.
Other dishes on the expanded menu rotate weekly but might include a comforting, sausage-armored Scotch egg ($12), a bowl of battered shrimp with garlic aioli ($13), or a 14-ounce, fork-tender Delmonico ($36) sheathed in melted gorgonzola and dusted with togarashi. Non-meat-eaters can still land the Gord ($18), a filling spinach-and-Romano cheese veggie burger named for Walker’s uncle, a lifelong vegetarian.
But while I might return for an amaretto sour and latest deep cut of local beef, the Heartbreaker is what continues to pull many back to Broken Hearts. Walker estimates that the onion-rich double smashburger still accounts for 60 to 70 percent of orders.
“People are so passionate about that burger,” he said.
Broken Hearts Burger, 192 Route 5, Fairlee. Reservations urged, with limited space for walk-ins.
The original print version of this article was headlined “A Burger Walks Into a Bar | At the retooled Broken Hearts Burger in Fairlee, the Heartbreaker still holds center stage”
This article appears in Oct 1-7 2025.
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