Elmwood Inn or "Ragin' Ron's Menu Regrets"

I did not have a great burger at the Elmood Inn, but it's not entirely their fault.  Once again my poor ordering skills were in full effect, as all the signs were there to point me towards what may have been a burger more suited to my palette, but like at Rohrbach's, I ignored them.  A quick glance at the menu shows me where I went wrong.

As you know my main point of contention with Rochester burgers is the roll everyone uses for buns, which throws the beef-to-bun ratio off and results in a bready and dry burger experience.  Well, this menu warned me that these burgers come on a roll, and yet still I threw caution to the wind and ordered a very basic cheeseburger - the standard lettuce, tomato, onion combo.  I also asked for mayo, but my request went unheeded (that one is on you, Elmwood Inn, we both made mistakes here).  My thought process was that I needed something simple to properly judge the meat.

Here's the spread:

I immediately regretted my relatively spartan burger choice as I began to power my way through another full-on bread slog.  This burger wasn't horrible, but eating it made me wish I had ordered something else.  My self doubt taunted me: "Why didn't I pay attention to that little square around the blue cheese burger?  It's got a square around it, it has to be good!"  The ghost of the "Cheeseburger Club" also haunted me with its tantalizing prospect of thousand island dressing (an In n' Out Burger staple) and two patties for a (in my imagination) better meat-to-bun ratio.  But I had made my choice and now I had to eat it and judge it on its own merits.  First of all, the Elmwood inn has some explaining to do if they think this is medium rare:

 

Uh, no.

That is called medium, approaching medium-well.  As we've established I have enough trouble ordering food without the added complication of having to guess what your establishment's arbitrary definition of medium-rare is, so here's a message to anyone cooking burgers: don't force me request a rare burger when I want medium-rare just because you are pandering to people who are scared of ground beef.  Apart from the overcooking, the patty could have used a better sear on the outside and some more salt, but the meat was okay and it had a decent texture.  The burger also comes with some unremarkable fries, which are indistinguishable from those you would get at Jay's.

Their website boasts "You'll Love Our Food... Or It's Free!" I'm sure they would have honored that if I had brought it up, but it's a moot point because even if I had read that guarantee before I did-not-Love their burger, who wants the hassle of trying to talk your way out of a bill at a restaurant?  I'll tell you who: the kind of asshole who sends their medium-rare burgers back complaining that they aren't cooked enough.

Also on their website I discovered they had hired this dude (apparently some kind of poor-man's Gordon Ramsey-for-hire) to update their menu, and there is a deceptive video of him making a hamburger.  Deceptive because he puts it on a normal hamburger bun, which he butters and toasts.  I guess whoever is actually in the kitchen at Elmwood has never seen this video since they just put their burger on the standard Rochester unbuttered kaiser roll.

The verdict:  Rochester style bun + unexciting pub style execution + Ron regrets his order = shoulder-shrugging indifference.  If I try one of the other burgers on the menu and its an epiphany, I'll be sure to post about it.  For now my opinion is that the Elmwood Inn is a decent place to grab a drink and chill out, but the burger is nothing to write home about.

Price: Burger + Fries: 7.59 (Or $0 if you do not love it, or just enjoy trying to weasel yourself free meals.)

Mini-review: The Rohrbach Burger

This is gonna be quickie since I didn't have my camera with me and I wasn't taking notes, but I thought I would write up my impressions anyway.  Recently I ended up at Rohrbach's Restaurant, an extension of the excellent local brewery, and of course I had to try the burger.  I had vague memories of eating their "Heart Stopper" burger (topped with bacon and a fried egg) in the distant past, and was anxious to try what I hoped would be a good pub style burger.  When I checked the menu, my eye was drawn toward "The Rohrbach Burger" and I ordered it under the assumption that something named after the brewery would be a good choice.  But to quote Samuel L. Jackson as Mitch Hennessy in the Renny Harlin retardo-classic "The Long Kiss Goodnight" - "When you make an assumption, you make an ass out of you and umption." 

In my burger ordering excitement I had failed to scrutinize the menu thoroughly and missed a detail that would have certainly made me alter my selection: it seems The Rohrbach Burger is "served on a large grilled hard crust Italian roll."  Oh.  Oh.  So my main issue with this thing is it's actually not really a burger at all.  It's more of a big sandwich that has some oblong ground beef inside.  The bread was good, similar to what you get at DiBella's, and the beef was high quality, but overall this whole concept gets a thumbs down from me.  First, the process of forming the patty into the weird long sub-sandwich shape seemed to have negatively affected the texture, as it was somewhat mealy.  The other downside of this goofy patty was uneven cooking - its inevitable that the ends of this patty end up overdone (which happened in my case) or the center underdone.  Apart from those issues, all my usual problems with using hearty sandwich-style rolls for burgers are just magnified by this giant, crusty, dense roll.  I'm not ruling out Rohrbach's yet, but the fact that they have dubbed this sandwich "The Rohrbach Burger" doesn't give me a lot of confidence in their other offerings.  On the plus side the beer-battered fries were above average and The Vanilla Porter I had with my meal was great.

Bill Gray's and the "Rochester style" Burger

For the first rageburger review I decided to revisit an old nemesis. Since my arrival in Rochester a decade ago, I have been plagued by what is known as the "Rochester style" burger. Initially I was confused as to why all my hamburgers were being served on kaiser rolls, then angered when I spotted a guy behind the grill at at Charlie's smash my patty flat with a weight, then finally resigned as I suffered a long series of disappointingly dry, flat, and bread-buried burgers. But as I mentioned in my first post, I'm going to make a serious effort to be open-minded with this blog, and that meant attacking the Rochester burger head-on with a trip to a restaurant that I vowed long ago never to return to, the standard-bearer of the Rochester style burger: Bill Gray's.

Bill Gray's slogan is a laughable boast clearly not meant to be taken seriously.  A giant plaque at the Henrietta location reminds me that they offer the "World's Greatest Cheeseburger." The fact that this appears below a fake locomotive engine sticking out of a wall makes me think maybe I shouldn't be too hard on Bill Gray's, since it's obviously a place aimed at kids. But then I think, fuck you Bill Gray's, world's greatest cheeseburger my ass. The last time I was here was probably about five years ago, and I remember the burger as dry, tasteless, and not worth revisiting. When I saw the little placard that explained the basic toppings options, I realized to some extent why this was.


Back then, I had naively ordered my burger "deluxe" instead of the obviously correct choice "everything." To get any satisfaction out of the Rochester burger, I have learned to suppress my California-bred burger instincts. These days I know that this burger is going to need that meat sauce, and this so-called "lettuce and tomato" are not going to be my childhood pals, In n' Out lettuce and tomato. Instead they will be a soggy mess of shredded leaves and a pale, unripe imitator, both them them lying flavorless across the patty and contributing little more than a vague sense of unease. So here I am older, wiser, and ordering "everything."  Another lesson: a single patty probably still won't be enough meat to combat the roll, so I order a double too.  Maybe I was wrong about Bill Gray's and my poor condiment choices were the real culprit?

 The Spread:

As you can see I also ordered some rings. I am a big fan of rings.  My dining companion ordered a veggie burger and fries:

I'll leave the veggie burger review to her (you can read it at the end of this post) but fries are an important part of the burger experience, so I'll try to touch on them in my reviews.  Unfortunately as you can see these are crinkle-cut.  In my experience there has never been a good crinkle-cut fry.  These were no exception, so there is no point discussing them further.  Moving on to the onion rings, these weren't bad, probably frozen, but with a dive-pizza-place flavor that reminded me of my childhood.  As for the burgers...

The Single:

First impression: Not as bad as I remember.  Congratulations Bill Gray's, you aren't as bad as I remember.  Unfortunately that's probably much the highest praise I can muster for this burger.  The sauce is a decent take on the typical Rochester spicy meat sauce, but it needs to be since its purpose is to distract you from the rubbery, chewy, and generally dry and flavorless meat.   Second impression: Why is there so much bread in my mouth?  Curse you, Kaiser Franz Joseph, I blame you for this egregious misuse of your otherwise delicious rolls!  Time to move on to...

The Double:

Okay, the ratio is much better now, and the extra meat sauce and cheese on this guy definitely made it more palatable, but they can't fix the fundamental flaws.  Sub par meat is still the main issue here (I was literally picking chunks of gristle out of my mouth) and even with twice as much meat and cheese the roll still manages to be too dense, bready, and distracting. 

The verdict:  Bill Gray's is for children, but you should probably take your kids somewhere good instead.  If there is a great Rochester style burger waiting out there for me, this isn't it.

Prices: "World's Greatest Cheeseburger," 3.99; Double Cheeseburger, 5.99; Veggie Burger, 4.29; Fries, 2.99; Onion Rings, 2.99

Addendum:  Bill Gray's Veggie Burger review, by Tara

I don’t have the same epicurean standards as Ron, nor do I share his animosity towards Bill Gray’s. As a vegetarian, I am just thankful they have something I can eat. Prior to this trip, I had been to BG’s a handful of times and had fond memories of their veggie burgers.  The first thing you will notice about the burger, besides that it oddly hangs off the bun, is that it tries really hard to look like meat. I find it a little unsettling but I’m always more taken with how pancake-flat the burger is. It’s served on a wheat roll, which I appreciate, but you can ask for a roll of your choice.   As for taste, it was more plain than I remembered, semi-dry and a little bland, with a slight “I’m trying to taste like hamburger” feel.  Still, I’m happy not to be eating a salad so I roll with it.  With this veggie burger, toppings are going to make or break your experience. This was my first BG’s veggie burger since I stopped eating cheese and it made a significant difference. There was only so much my tomato and lettuce could do to compensate for the flavor loss.  Still, I liked my burger. It’s kinda fun to have the whole burger joint experience sans flesh.  Next time I will just load up on condiments.   

okay

Where I'm coming from

Not everyone's ideal burger is the same, and all food reviews are subjective, so to give some context for my reviews I'm going to outline my ideal burger. My ideal burger is not about wacky toppings, secret spices, or fancy buns. It's a showcase for good meat. I want to taste quality beef, with a lot of juicy fat dripping out of it. I want the meat seasoned with plenty of salt to bring out it's flavor. I want a a thick patty with a good sear on the outside, medium rare or rare on the inside. I want a good texture, not something ground too finely. I want good beef-to-bun ratio, and a soft bun that doesn't distract from the meat with dense bread or a weird flavor.

That's my ideal perfect burger... but food is about variety and creativity, and I try to be open-minded, so I don't automatically dismiss a burger that doesn't meet my criteria. I love some fast food burgers, especially In N' Out, which I grew up eating and consider the embodiment of the classic California style burger. I also love sliders, and I'll hit White Castle whenever I'm near one. As of this post my favorite fast food style burger in Rochester is Five Guys, which is great, and the only national chain that I would get a burger at is Wendy's (a triple stack gets me my ideal beef-bun ratio). I'm also always interested in expanding my horizons and trying out local burger variations and experiments. So now you know me. Let's rage.

hey rochester

tell me where your favorite burger is and i will unleash the hammer of justice upon it.