Leia, Matt and I went out for lunch yesterday. We didn’t have a particular place in mind, so we just started wandering around the West End (since that’s where our office is now). We came across Tony Roma’s which sounded pretty good; so we walked in.
It was maybe 1:30 at this point, so the restaurant was fairly empty. We were seated at a table near the bar and I soon noticed the above par number of beer bottles featured along the shelf behind the bar (but, I just ordered water with lunch, natch). The menus were tri-fold glossy jobbies, which is about what I expected. And, as I started looking through the menu, Leia helpfully pointed out that they had blue cheese burgers. “Well, that makes my choice easy!”, I said as I refolded my menu back to its compact form.
We placed our orders and the food arrived didn’t take long to arrive. Leia had barbecued chicken with broccoli on the side, Matt had a barbecue chicken sandwich and I had the blue cheese burger (also with broccoli on the side). From that point forward, the experience became a bit surreal. As we ate our meals, we couldn’t help but notice the awful music piped over the speaker system, a smattering of mid-80s not-really-hits, if I recall. And, what was even more bizarre, as our server came by to fill up our glasses from a pitcher of water, I noticed that she was quietly humming along to this schlock.
But, back to the food. I ordered the blue cheese burger, of course, and even though blue cheese alone is usually enough to entice me to order a dish of Ingredient X + Blue Cheese, I saw when I was reading the menu that their blue cheese burger also featured bacon — which was only a further bonus. Jumping back in the timeline a bit, when the food first arrived and the server was handing the plates from her servers’ tray to our table, the burger whet my appetite: the blue cheese was sprinkled liberally across the face of the patty and the buns appeared to be toasted as well. I soon learned that appearances could be deceiving.
I was initially pleased that the burger included not one but two slices of tomato. However, they proved to be largely useless — they were about a third of an inch thick each and, even with one slice, the hamburger was too tall to fit my mouth. The tomato slices were soon placed to the side. And, as I gripped the bun, about to take a bite, I couldn’t help but notice that the bun was actually a bit sticky. It didn’t leave a residue on my fingers but there was definitely some adhesion to my fingertips somewhat similar to the effect of Post-It notes.
My first couple bites were mostly bun-filled, but that’s not uncommon for hamburgers in general. As I ate towards the center of the burger, something seemed awry with the burger but I couldn’t put my finger on it at first. Then, as I noticed myself having to wash down a bite with a sip of water, it dawned on me that the patty was of the subsaharan variety. Imagine for a moment chomping down on a dry kitchen sponge placed inside a hamburger bun; that would approximate both the texture and moisture content of this hamburger. Now, I’m not saying that this was the worst hamburger that I’ve ever had. Oh wait, yes I am.
After braving through our meals, we set out to pay our bill. Leia and Matt opted to use cash while I paid for my portion with a credit card. At this point, it was probably after 2:00 — we were almost the only people in the restaurant — but it took what seemed like 10-15 minutes for our server to run the card. All the same, while my hamburger may have been less than ideal, I might be willing to give Tony Roma’s the benefit of the doubt; maybe they were having an off-day, or maybe hamburgers just aren’t their specialty. So, if my coworkers want to go for lunch there again sometime, I may just give that a try. But, I’ll probably order a non-beef entree from their menu ;).