That right there is what the burgers at Arthur's in Hyde Park are supposed to look like. I know because I stole those two pics from their homepage. It's part of the rotating group of pictures that they have up on their landing page.
Big pieces of bacon...cheese nicely melted...big piece of lettuce with pickles and onions kept separate from the hot part of the burger until you put it together.
Yeah...
'Cause it's certainly not what we got when we went to Arthur's on Labor Day Eve, taking advantage of the off day on Monday to try their Burger Madness special that's available on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Plus we had a Groupon to get $20 of food for just $10.
At $7 for burgers and fries with a coupon basically getting one of our burgers for free, that's not too bad.
Let's look at the tale of the tape, though, to see how Arthur's burgers stack up...
Burger:
- Nothing special to speak about here. The meat was, indeed, beef, but it didn't have any spice or special quality to it. The burger was on the rare side of the medium that I ordered but lacked the strong beef flavor that I would've expected in such a case. There wasn't any deep crust on the burger either. It wasn't a bad beef patty, it just didn't have a single thing to separate it from other burger that you can get at any other restaurant around the city. Burger - 5
- One of the selling points of the Burger Madness event (check Arthur's menu about two-thirds of the way down that page) is that you get a bunch of free toppings: American Cheese, Cheddar Cheese, Swiss Cheese, Provolone Cheese, Blue Cheese, Pepper Jack Cheese, Banana Peppers, Sautéed Onions, Sautéed Mushrooms, Sautéed Green Peppers, Jalapenos, Bacon, and Chili (their capitals - I'm just too lazy to do more than copy and paste that list. I went for sauteed onions and banana peppers in addition to the standard lettuce and tomato. The onions were lightly sauteed, not given much time to develop the dark, rich flavors that we got from Cafe de Wheels's rich, dark balsamic onions. The peppers could've also been sauteed (as were those from Terry's). All in all, there wasn't anything wrong with the toppings, but there weren't a lot of things right. Their point above average here come because those toppings are free during Burger Madness. Toppings - 6.
- Straight out Sysco. These didn't have any spice - not salt nor pepper nor anything. No breading, no hint of potato peelings still around, no anything to distinguish them. They were served hot and cooked to a decent golden. Fries - 5
Ambiance
- I didn't take any pictures of the inside (it was packed the night we went) or the outside (it was dark when we got inside) of Arthur's so we'll have to depend on the two pics from their website to back up my observations.
Arthur's selling point is that it's a neighborhood bar. It's been in the same place as Arthur's since the 1970s and as some sort of restaurant of the same style since 1947. The current owners started there as servers and bought the restaurant but have kept it largely as it was.
And, it has a nice, neighborhood feeling. The place was packed on the Sunday night that we were there, assumedly with many of those folks being from the Hyde Park area. The main restaurant/bar room - right behind the entry way shown above right - has a large, not-too-well-lit bar area. The bar area has one wall painted with the mural you can see above. I'm guessing it's people who were regulars at Arthur's back in the day. I don't know them. We ate in the expanded area to the right with low ceilings, walls painted to resemble a stone cellar, booths tightly packed in.
I might be more charitable here if Arthur's was my neighborhood bar, but it's not. I found Arthur's dark and crowded. Ambiance - 5
- I'll include the Burger Madness & Groupon stuff in the Other Stuff section. For now, I'm just looking at their standard pricing. Standard burger is $7.50. Cheddar bacon burger is $9.00 and comes with fries. The diet coke is $2 even. That's $11 for the standard: cheddar bacon burger with diet coke. That's slightly higher than the $9.50-$10.50 needed for an even five. Cost - 4
- Burger madness brings the price down to a preferable $9. I'll give 'em a bonus point for having this regular (ever Sunday, Monday, Tuesday) special. +1
- The groupon is also a nice option, but that's a one-time thing that probably won't be repeated. Unless you've been on Groupon for a while, you won't get this one. No bonus points for this one.
- Terry's Turf Club - 45
- Cafe de Wheels - 44
- VanZandt - 34
- Quatman's - 32 / 34.5
- Sammy's - 26
- Arthur's - 26
More to come...
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