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| - First off, oh my goodness, have you ever watched Hubert Keller's "Secrets of a Chef" on PBS?
Love him. To me, he's a warm, charming, and charismatic Merlin Who Cooks, offering up wonderful recipes...teaching us plebian foodies how to preserve lemons for Moroccan tagine dishes in his lovely French accent. He makes quality and seemingly inaccessible foods and techniques approachable, and his recipes are even listed on his website for free! The mind behind a number of restaurants like the upper-end Fleur de Lys and Sleek, when he's been filmed inside his third establishment, the Burger Bar, it has always appeared to be a business-casual yet classy burger joint where you wouldn't be out of place ordering truffles or an extra side of fries.
Dude, the servers were dressed like Hooter's girls without the nylons! And weren't half as friendly! No! This is not what I expected! It really was like a bar, with uncomfortable seats, blaring music, and overpriced food. I was the only PBS geek who was going through a mental breakdown as the four of us got seated.
Ok, I thought: maybe the food belies the atmosphere. Wonderfully extensive beer & wine list. Yes, there were the creative doughnut dessert burgers. Admirably diverse burgers overall - from the kobe beef to salmon to bison...
But when the food came, nobody was impressed. My sliders were dry and lacked adequate taste, the fries were fine, and everything else others had fell into that overall category: "fine." The prices would have indicated one could expect something of a higher caliber.
Before I had actually come to Burger Bar, I wanted to try a dessert burger, just for the novelty of it all. But with the meal having been so beneath what I felt were reasonable expectations, I didn't want to throw any more money away for nothing.
Oh Hubert Keller - I had such high hopes for my first experience with you offscreen. But I'm sticking to our long-distance television relationship and exploring therapy.
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