Lonnieburger baskets: Tank's Bar & Grill (Dayton)

It's March so that means basketball. Next Thursday, for example, I have tickets to see the national DII men's semifinals at Bank of Kentucky arena over in Northern Kentucky. Hopefully Bellarmine will keep rolling along to at least then - and maybe to a second straight championship?

But I digress...

Calen and I trekked to the University of Dayton where we sadly saw the Vikes lose to the Middies - whose coach broke out Principal's heart last year, but that's neither here nor there. What is here and there is Tank's Bar & Grill (they provided the outside pic - no snow on the day we visited) in Dayton, a little down the road from the University of Dayton, a place that comes semi-recommended by RuffRyder (who used to and maybe still does frequent these parts). Calen texted and asked for a burger recommendation near his old campus, and he sent us to Tank's. Turns out, however, that he's never been there himself. He'd just heard that it was good.

So, let's put that quasi-recommendation to the test and see if anybody salutes.

Burger

• Apologies for the photo quality that you're going to see a little later. I could blame Calen's camera, but mine's no better, honestly. This first pic, though, is spot on clear and you get about as good a pic of the burger as you're going to see.
  
  The burger is freshly made with loose form and slightly sloppy shaping. The beef seems to be of decent quality with a nicely moist feel and enough fat to leave my fingers shiny as I ate the burger. That's all good. The problem, however, comes with the purity of that beefiness. There seemed to be absolutely no spice in the burger at all - no salt, no pepper, no nothing. Calen and I both salted - and I peppered - our burgers and found them vastly improved. I'm not a salt freaky by any stretch of the imagination, but I do want some flavor other than the pure beef. Pure beef is bland, man, no matter how good it is.
  
  The burger wasn't crusty and was pushed a little beyond the medium that I had ordered - no pink anywhere to be found on mine or on Calen's (also ordered medium). So, what's that make? In almost rightly cooked, utterly unspiced, fresh beef burger. What's that worth? Burger - 6 

Fries

• The fries in the top of the photo are in focus. Shut up...
  
  You can also see that they're also a little shiny (I don't want to say greasy, but they kind of were). They also weren't crispy in the least or very spiced. Clearly, Tank (Calen's pretty sure that Tank, himself, was at a table a couple away from us and might be eating a few too many of his own burgers...every day) isn't a man to overly (or remotely correctly) spice things. C'mon, man. They are, however, freshly cut. If you've had fries at Penn Station, you've had the fries at Tank's give or take. Fries - 5

 
Toppings

• The bacon was bacony but not noteworthy.The onion was sharp and bitey, fresh. The cheese was melted and slightly translucent. The lettuce had cell walls and chloroplast and everything. Trust me; I saw them with my own bare eyes. The toppings were successfully placed on top of the burger. Nothing was wrong with them, but nothing was particularly right about them, either. Toppings - 5 

Ambiance

•  I was surprised that Tank's turned out to be a disco on the inside...particularly because the outside doesn't seem all that disco-ey.

Wait, no, that was just my shaky camera skills. The flash was supposed to be off, but it turns out it wasn't. When the flash hit, I moved the stupid thing out of everybody's face so I wouldn't be that jerk-face who flashed his camera flash all over that place.

Ambiance

• Tank's is a solid, neighborhood place. They've got a bar and a couple of rooms in which to dine. They've got nice, hanging plants over the bar. They've got restrooms that are sort of heated. They've got a bunch of televisions around - no flat screens here, though. Things are a little dated, but they're comfy and friendly. Ambiance - 6

Cost

• $7.99 for the burger - cheese and bacon included...diet coke was a couple more bucks. That's right in the middle of the range. Cost - 5 

Other Stufffff

• Seriously, the plants are a nice touch. Fresh oxygen in the room is always appreciated. +`1 
• Um, there's not much else to be said about Tank's. It's not a bad place, but it's the kind of place that exists pretty much in every town. 

The math isn't looking too good for Tank's. Where do they fall?

Tank's Bar & Grill got 28 points.

• Terry's Turf Club - 45
• Cafe de Wheels - 44
• Senate - 43 
• City View Tavern - 40 (scaled from 32/40)
• Stuffed on Vine - 38
• Five Guys Burgers and Fries - 36 
• Roxy's - 36
• VanZandt - 34
• Gabby's - 34 
• Oakley Pub & Grill - 34 
• Quatman's - 32 / 34.5
• Troy's - 32 
• By Golly's - 32
• Wildflower Cafe - 31.25 (scaled from 26/40) 
• Sidetracks - 31
• Virgil's Cafe - 28 
• Tank's Bar & Grill - 28
• The Pub at Rookwood Mews - 28
• Smashburger - 28
• Habits Cafe - 28
• Graffiti Burger - 27
• Arthur's - 26
• Sammy's - 25 
• Gordo's - 20

Maybe we should try Doubleday's.