Shake Shack Launches White Truffle Burger And Tries Out Tasting Menu

When Shake Shack first debuted in 2001 as a hot dog cart inside New York City’s Madison Square Park, it was clear that this wasn’t typical fast food. Prep for the cart was done inside the kitchen of Danny Meyer’s fine-dining destination Eleven Madison Park.

And now in 2023, nearly 20 years after Meyer turned Shake Shack into a permanent Madison Square Park kiosk, the publicly traded burger empire with more than 400 locations around the world is revisiting its fine-dining roots.

Shake Shack has launched its new white truffle menu with a white truffle burger, a white truffle mushroom burger and Parmesan fries with white truffle sauce.

And it’s also offering an over-the-top white-tablecloth tasting menu for just $20 per person at select locations from February 27 through March 2. The Truffle Table experience for two people includes all three of the new menu items plus unlimited canned Gotham Winery wine, an unlimited non-alcoholic beverage, a shake and a bottle of Regalis truffle oil and a chocolate truffle fromThierry Atlan. Reservations are now live for locations that include Shake Shack outposts in New York, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, Austin and Houston.

“We can’t wait to test this new fine-dining experience with our guests to honor one of the most exquisite and luxurious ingredients in our pantry, the white truffle,” John Karangis, executive chef and vice president of culinary innovation at Shake Shack said in a statement. “From start to finish, we want guests to feel the most premium experience at Shake Shack from the food and wine to the table settings and music.”

This is the latest special event from a burger behemoth that loves to use premium ingredients and has often collaborated with top-tier chefs. Last year, Shake Shack did a pop-up in New York and Los Angeles with esteemed chef Enrique Olvera (Pujol, Cosme, Damian), who served a burger topped with chicatana ant mayo as the main dish on a menu that also included a potato and broccoli cream tamal, sweet potato fries with guacachile salsa and a corn husk meringue shake.

Shake Shack had previously collaborated with other notable chefs including Dominique Crenn, Massimo Bottura, Daniel Humm, David Chang, Junghyun Park, Daniel Boulud, Marc Vetri, Zaiyu Hasegawa, Sat Bains, Dan Barber, Fergus Henderson and Nicole Rucker, among many others. Humm, not incidentally, shaved black truffles all over an $8.50 burger for Shake Shack’s 10th anniversary. That Humm burger resulted in the longest line ever at Shake Shack’s Madison Square Park location, with some guests waiting five-and-a-hald hours. By the end of the one-day collaboration, Shake Shack had sold more than 1,000 of Humm’s truffle-topped burgers.