I love dives, love them. You find the tastiest fast food in those. And someone opened a new one and went to great lengths to NOT make it look like a chain restaurant. They went for the street-food look but indoors. The logo design for Buns is reminiscent of the 70s. All the place need was a few pinball machines and it could have passed for The Hub from That 70s Show.
The place feels like a couple of students got tired of working for McDonald's and opened up this joint to keep working during their studies but I could be terribly wrong. The menu couldn't be simpler. You have Hamburgers, Double-Hamburgers, Roasted Potatoes and Soft-Drinks. And that's it - of course cheese is an option on the burgers and it's free. Everything is prepared on a single fire grill parked in the window display to attract pedestrian traffic indoors, keeping with the street food inspiration.
If you've been keeping up, that's right, no fries but grilled potatoes. And that's a great change from the insane amount of fried potatoes we get to eat in the period of a month. And they are pretty damn tasty and much more filling than fries.
I wish I could be as enthusiastic about the burger though. Sadly there's nothing to be wowed about the BUNS Burger. It's a standard issued dry over-cooked burger you've eaten before at your uncle's poolside BBQ during the summer time. Good filler but a good burger it is not. The meat was dry, unseasoned, bland and very ordinary chuck. The bun was good so were the fixings. But an ordinary burger, nothing to make me understand why everyone in the dive were raving about the burgers? Maybe the patrons are also tired of eating pre-fabs at the food chains and simply enjoy the home-made taste of BUNS and I so get that. But the patty could have used a little imagination to seriously create a demarcation point from your run of the mill burger.