Food: A Place For Food

 "Food" is an aptly named establishment located in Victor.  I would recommend Food for people that enjoy food, and I am happy to report that they make a very good hamburger (hamburgers are a type of food).  As you can see from the smaller sign to the right of the sign that says Food, the hours of Food are limited, so take note if you are in the mood for food at Food.  Food is usually pretty packed, and its a small place, so be prepared for the possibility of a wait.  Here is what it looks like when it is not open:

Usually, a lot of cars are here.

A sign that the food at Food is going to be good: it is always busy despite being a restaurant named "Food" with weird hours located in a boring portable-looking building next to an office park. My one previous visit to Food had been pleasant, so when I recently became hungry for food, I decided to return, and this time burgers were on the menu.  The menu just said "Cheddar Burger" so I had no idea what to expect in terms of burger style, and our server seemed in too much of a hurry for me to ask, but since everything else at Food is good, I figured it would be a worthwhile offering.

Food serves up easily the best Rochester Style burger I've had to date, and though I'm generally not a fan, this burger won me over with a great execution.  The first thing that set it apart was the bun, which although more robust than the typical fast food style bun, was still extremely soft and light and was clearly fresh baked, making it a great burger vehicle and a far cry from my burger nemesis, the kaiser roll.  I was wary of the name "Cheddar Burger" which could have meant an overpoweringly Cheddary experience, but the cheese used turned out to be very mild, so even thought it was generously applied the flavor was subtle and well balanced in context.

Most important of all, the patty was awesome.  You can see the killer crust peeking out from under the edges of the cheese, and it tasted as good as it looks.  This is a smashed burger done right: smashed onto the griddle at the beginning of cooking, but not weighted down or repeatedly flattened, yielding  maximum surface crust without losing too much moisture.  Not only was this cooked properly, it was also well seasoned, good quality meat. As you can see, they put the lettuce and tomato on the side.  A good move, as they would only detract from this burger.  My only complaint is that I think it would really shine with two patties instead of one, so I may have to ask if they'll make me a double next time.

Verdict: Food serves a great Rochester Style burger, even if you're not particularly into that kind of thing.

Price: $7.00, came with a side of potato salad, which was also good.

(Also:  I should mentioned that the menu at Food changes every day, so the burger might not always be available.  If you want to make sure, give them a call first: (585) 742-3280)

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.