After a much needed nap, I went to a local Slow Food-esque restaurant with BT called Burger Lounge (La Jolla). From their website, they specialize in "utilizing healthy ingredients produced in a sustainable environment". Most notably, all their meat is either grass fed or free range.
Environment:
The restaurant has a very modern feel and what felt like an excessive amount of orangey/yellowish lighting. Considering its small size, it exuded a warm, homely feeling. There are table seating outside and only counter seating inside.
Service:
Although it is a sit down restaurant with waiters/waitresses bringing out your food and cleaning up, it's a pay first, eat later establishment. We received our food fairly quickly especially since we sat by the kitchen.
Food:
As a self proclaimed flexitarian (flexible vegetarian), I couldn't pass up the chance to get the veggie burger which is made with quinoa! and brown rice, zucchini, garbanzo, carrot, corn, and chipotle. I chose the seasonal Autumn veggie burger for a $1 more which came with goat cheese and a garlic aioli. I honestly dislike the taste of goat cheese yet for some weird reason, I'm always intrigued enough to order a dish with it. BT got the lounge burger which is their most popular. It came with house made thousand island sauce, grilled onions, and white cheddar. We split a half & half (half fries, half onion rings) and a vanilla milkshake.
The fries were a crispy perfection further enhanced by the homemade creamy ranch. Neither the onion rings or fries were overly greasy.
While the burgers were satisfying, I felt like the food was on the bland side, too healthy even LOL The meat/veggie patty were not seasoned enough and lacked that oomph.
A little side note, the best burger I ever had was at Burgermeister, a hamburger shack underneath the train tracks in Berlin. That meat was seasoned beautifully!!
Autumn Veggie Burger |
Lounge Burger |
Half & Half |
The first couple of bites were tasty considering I had not eaten for 5 hours. Overall, Burger Lounge only gets 3/5 stars for me. I tried it once but probably would not frequent there often.
Keep feasting fellow gastronomes!
xoxo, Amy