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| - I had a hankering for a burger today, and I got on the web to see if there was anything close to my hotel in Pittsburgh (The Renaissance on 6th). Surprise! Doubleday was listed and it was nearly next door.
I have walked past Doubleday's many times on my to and from the Renaissance, but never paid much notice. My impression was that it was a dark, smoke-filled bar that dabbled in t the food business and not my kind of place. Wrong!
I was pleasantly surprised at how clean the interior was. It clearly shows its age, but it is clean and I was comfortable sitting at one of the tables against the wall.
I ordered a bacon cheeseburger and fries and it was exactly what I was hoping for. The burger is listed as 8 ounces in the menu and I have no reason to doubt it. I think this is the perfect size for a burger. It was cooked perfectly to medium (slightly pink on the inside), with a nice dark brown crust on the outside. It was juicy and had great grilled flavor.
The bun was soft and had a nice chew to it -- I hat buns that are too dry, or too crumbly. The menu says the buns are baked fresh daily and I believe it.
A few other nice touches -- the bacon was nice and crisp and wasn't slice too thin. The tomatoes (I asked for them) were sliced about 3/8 inch thick and were just right. Too often a place will slice them paper thin, but these had enough thickness to them to make a difference.
As for the fries, they were good but not excellent. I prefer a thicker cut fry and these were shoestring potatoes. But they were cooked to a great crisp, and they had a slight onion flavor -- purists might quibble that the fries were cooked in the same oil as onion rings or something ghastly like that. But I say: Great! the extra taste is a bonus and seemed to fit in perfectly with the burger and overall ambiance.
My lunch set me back $10 with tax for my bacon cheeseburger, large fry, and diet coke.
I rate this a solid 4 stars. There are better burgers out there, but this one was solidly in the top 1/3 of burgers I've eaten around the country while on my many travels.
I recommend Doubleday's.
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