September 6, 2015

Finger Painting Of Burgers

There are all types of artistic expression or styles and the very first one humans learn is while they're in preschool - finger painting. At this stage, it's definitely, "in the eye of the beholder!" and of course you're going to tell your child how beautiful it is. However, when it comes to food and restaurants using art to describe their food, you better be able to bring work a da Vinci to the table, not something done by a 6 year old.

Some of you have tried to collect every shot glass or t-shirt from this next place for the Gnaw to visit and you guessed right, it's the Hard Rock Cafe. For several years, downtown Minneapolis had a Hard Rock Cafe and the couple of times I've gone, it's been a very unsatisfying experience. It eventually closed, but several years later, opened back up inside the Mall of America's Nickelodeon Universe. It's been opened for a year now, but my wife and I refused to go, knowing what our past experiences have been.

We finally gave in during a recent shopping visit and decided it was time to see if anything has changed. As I open the menu to look things over, I find myself on the burger menu. I start to read, "You know how phenomenal artists take something real and raw and make it legendary? Yeah, our burgers are like that!" I see burgers with the word legendary in the name and I start to wonder... Are they legendary? Are they actually better than past experiences?

My wife ordered a Hickory BBQ Bacon Cheeseburger while I went with their Original Legendary Burger. The place wasn't very full and my wife mentioned, "does it seem like it's taking a little long?" And it was like the runner could hear her, out came our burgers. Mine came with an onion ring, so I immediately went for the ring. After just one bite and only one bite, I decided to put it down. Well... the onion ring was cold (makes sense for the length of time it took) and I took a quick bit of my burger which was also cold. Instead of being medium (pink in color on the inside), mine was looking over cooked.

My wife on the other hand said that hers was cooked more inline with how we like our burgers prepared, but even after a few bites in, hers too had signs of being over cooked. I decided to inform our server of the situation, but that I would eat my burger as we didn't have time for a new one to be made. Our server was however, kind enough to right the wrong and had a manager comp my meal.

Clearly, using the word legendary or describing your food in a way to suggest that your food is like a fine piece of art work, is false! I would however describe the Hard Rock's food to that of a fine finger painting art piece. It amazes me that their restaurants are typically crammed full when the food is so mediocre. It must be that really cool drum stick on the wall from Tommy Lee or that very ridiculous purple costume that "the symbol" donned in Purple Rain! Whatever it is, I'll stick to the true da Vinci's around town that make my tummy happy.

Hard Rock Cafe
Mall of America - Nickelodeon Universe