Red Robin’s schtick is Bottomless Fries. Cheap promotion, seeing as 99% of people can’t/won’t finish a regular serving of their steak fries. They aren’t bad, they’re just filling.
I eat at RR every 3 months or so. I long ago learned to order my burger with everything but the cheese “on the side.” Otherwise my order is another case of “Confuse the Cook.” They are in the same class as TGIF, Chilis, etc., but I’d put them in the top half of the class.
We just went there recently, and altho we have had better, the burgers were not greasy. Not great but not bad at all.
Yeah, that was during the great Jingle and Theme song period, where crapo show like Gilligan’s isle could be sold on the basis of a great theme song. When cheap kids cartoons had great songs- I mean- “Super Chicken”?
The Hamms song was pretty great also.
That made me laugh out loud. I’m surprised they don’t sell a dehydrated version that is a can of air.
Reminds me of that old joke: Do you know why Coors Light is better than Coors?
Because if you have to drink piss, you want it watered down.
I only have 1 Red Robin story. I wanted a hamburger and ordered mac and cheese as a side. Turning a 1/4 lb burger into 1/3 lb doesn’t make it better. it just makes it harder to bite into. There’s a certain bun/burger/condiment ratio and their’s failed. I was just embarrassed for them over their mac and cheese. It was cooked macaroni with some kind of cheese sprinkled over it partially melted. Maybe the cook wanted to get fired but the experience left a bad taste in my mouth.
I’m not sure who came up with the idea of a 1/3 lb burger for trendy bars but I’d rather have well made sliders than a giant burger. Mix it into meatloaf so it has some flavor and make a sandwich out of it if you need “bigger is better”.
And stop with the kettle fries. They universally suck. They’re hard to chew and whatever spice you throw in them isn’t helping. It’s just spicy suck. If you have to be trendy use a premium potato chip and serve it with a fancy dip so it fulfills your “trendy” requirements. Call it potato salsa.
BTW, for all those of you complaining that In-n-Out fries are limp, you can ask for them “well-done” and they’ll fry them for longer until they’re crispy as hell.
IMHO, soft fries aren’t always a bad thing; they remind me of the cafeteria fries that were served with every school lunch in high school and junior high. Not particularly salty or flavorful, but they were moist and filling even on days when all of the mains you could choose from were utterly inedible.
My god.
When I moved away from San Diego, carne asada fries were the avant-garde of what you could do with fry-based shareables. This is turning those up to 15.
Throw some guacamole on there and you’d have perfection.
Hamms. The beer Re Fresh Ing.
There used to be one of those light-up Hamms sign in every mom-and-pop restaurant I went into as a kid.
The old Hamburger Hamlet chain (only in L.A. as far as I know) had 1/4 lb and 1/2 lb burgers. I prefer bigger burgers because it’s easier to get one pink in the middle.
You can also ask for medium-well and they are crispier without being turned into potato sticks.
I totally get that you want a rare hamburger but at some point they become poorly seasoned meatloaf. What usually makes it worse is insufficient bunnage. The buns need to be able to hold up to the load they carry.
For me, what turns a hamburger into meatloaf is too many additives in the beef mixture. Just plain beef won’t seem like meatloaf to me no matter how big it is.
The dearly departed Fuddrucker’s (not gone, just “gone from around here”) was master of that art. Freshly baked buns that could handle the load of a fully customizable burger.
a lot of the places that have the "chilli size"have those huge buns since most of them are the size of dinner plates …
any restaurant that attempts to make a “home” version of their menu …90 percent of the time they’re mediocre if they have any semblance of what they’re supposed to be or plainly just suck
Probably, but I’m not one. However, that being said, occasionally I will stop in for a plate of fish and chips. Now before anyone starts talking about how crappy their F&Cs are - I know, they don’t don’t compare real HtoG good ones, but sometimes I’m in the mood for the greasy mess that they are.
Idea for a thread?
Yeah, but why!? Why not make them regular and let people ask for mushy if they want them?
I used to really enjoy going there. For a casual dining restaurant, their food was on the better side, quality-wise, IMO. (And, I really did like the steak fries.)
But, over the past five or six years, every visit I made to a Red Robin (several different locations) featured remarkably bad service. Slow, indifferent service, servers disappearing for an extended period of time, etc. A year or so ago, I finally gave up, and haven’t been back to one.
Being in Arizona it was Lucky Lager here, with the moving waterfall.
Those moving waterfall signs were an endless source of fascination for me as a child.
Where are you? One of the Fuddrucker’s near Boston has just closed for good (or soon will), but there’s still one left. I was just there this evening.
I like your ideas!
Me too. How did they work? I puzzled and puzzled until my puzzler was sore.
Lucky Lager! Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time … a long time. I can’t quite resurrect what their trade dress looked like, nor their slogan / jingle / whatever, but I’m enjoying the feeling of vaguely remembering the gestalt of it all.