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| - Behind an oversized door lies a dining room w/a long bar, as well as an outdoor eating area where burger buffs can enjoy both their food and the weather. Both the indoor and outside areas are adorned with retro-chic furniture, cozy enough to support your back, but not cozy enough to keep you comfortable during a long stretch of burger-eating and martini-drinking. Based on the tables and chairs, I fulled expected to see shag carpet make a cameo, but, alas, it was nowhere in sight.
While the decor at Stax is straight out of the late '60s, the menu is anything but. Yet somehow the retro feel is very appropriate for the menu, which takes classic comfort foods--like burgers and mac and cheese--and brings them into the 21st century.
The muse of the double-sided menu at Stax is the burger. Poor decision-makers may find a meal at Stax overwhelming, as building your burger can be a multi-step process.
No matter what you order, you won't walk away w/empty pockets. Stax-style burgers are $4-5 apiece, while plain meat on a but costs $3-4. All of the toppings--bacon, cheese, salsas, aiolis--cost $.25 per burger, meaning you can throw on a good number of topping and still keep your slider under $5. That is, unless you splurge on a slice of foie gras, which will double the price of your custom creation.
Burgers of this caliber deserve classy-yet-comforting side dishes. Stax hits the mark by serving up crispy, golden tater tots in a mini frying basket. The tots, about $5, feed 2-3 people. Other side dishes include sweet potato fries, onion rings and macaroni and cheese.
During my visit, the order of tater tots were treated as an appetizer, brought out a good 10-15 minutes before the sliders arrived. I figured the burgers would be out soon, so I began dipping the tots into mayo and ketchup (standard sauces w/an order of tots) and two aiolis, one a basil-flecked pesto and the other a spicy pink sauce which turned out to be the standout of the bunch.
Presentation is just one of many criteria that contributes to the enjoyment of a meal. More important, though, is flavor. The salsa atop a lamb slider was delicious, and the melted cheese (feta?) provided the right amount of saltiness to complement the lamb. The meat, unfortunately, tasted gamy, which I tend not to appreciate in lamb. While lamb can dry out easily, this little patty of meat was juicy and flavorful.
Having sampled elk within the past couple of months, I was feeling adventurous. Thus, I ordered the Stax-style ostrich burger, topped with hand-pulled mozzarella, bruschetta tomatoes, and leaves of fresh basil. The ostrich was juicy and flavorful, tasting less like chicken and more like beef. The burger's toppings were surprisingly complementary, as I would have thought those toppings would have been better-suited for chicken or beef. The final verdict on ostrich is YUM...
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