I feel like I should know when burgers became fancy because it had to have happened sometime in the 28 years I’ve been alive. When I was a kid, burgers were things that came from fast food chains or on occasion, family restaurants when you got tired of the chicken fingers or spaghetti. I can’t remember when this whole thing started but somewhere along the line, burgers became an option at more upscale restaurants where you should lay napkins across your lap and there’s more than one fork on the table. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. Like with just about all food, nothing really matters other than whether or not it tastes good. If the ingredients and preparation justify the extra cost, I’m always more than willing to put on my fancy pants and give a gourmet version of our favorite backyard barbecue food a try as I have in the past many times. I’ve eaten some really awesome but often just silly burgers…some stuffed with fois gras and short ribs, some that were a ridiculous $60+, and recently, one made from kangaroo so how does Romer’s Burger Bar stack up?
I believe Romer’s has been open for about a year now in the trendy Kitsilano area of Vancouver. As you can see, the space looks like a modern sports bar with flat-screens on the wall and mood lighting everywhere. Obviously, this is no greasy spoon with chrome cushioned bar stools. At least the music is subdued (although strangely some songs are REALLY LOUD compared to others…MP3s not normalized maybe?) and there isn’t any of that obnoxious UNCE-UNCE-UNCE music like at some other similar establishments. Yes, you can be a hip restaurant without catering to the fist pumping crowd.
Because we had a party of 12, we were seated in the private party room downstairs, which has plenty of room to seat about 25-30 people comfortably. It’s an interesting room that has me thinking it’s some kind of mix of bank vault and recording studio. There’s fake safety deposit boxes on the walls and there’s a red chair in the hallway for no apparent reason.
As we were a large table, Romer’s said we had to order off a set menu. You have a choice of three different ones which are $18, $20 and $24 a person. I’m sure we could add whatever we wanted off the regular menu but we had to order the set meal, which was made up of three appetizers to share, a salad, a burger and fries. I don’t know how they would handle this with other parties but basically four people shared three appetizers, a salad, two baskets of fries and four burgers, which we sliced up so we could each try a quarter of all four.
We started with a Threesome ($7 off the menu)…get your minds out of the gutter…which was a platter of spicy kosher dills, warm roasted nuts and garlic green olives. You can actually order the pickles and nuts for $2 individually while the olives are $4.
I’m just not a fan of olives. I’ll eat them on…things but just not alone. I have the same issue with tomatoes, which I really don’t like eating by themselves but really enjoy as a complementary component of something bigger. I don’t pick them off of pizza or salads but I’m just not a fan of them alone so I skipped these. A few of my friends nibbled on a couple of them but none of us are big fans so I’m afraid I can’t really give an opinion here.
The nuts are a combination of peanuts, Brazil nuts, cashews, almonds and I think hazelnuts. They’re warm and toasty with a little kick of spice. I wouldn’t mind a little bit of salt in there but these were tasty and great for just munching on while you’re talking with your friends and drinking as you wait for your burgers.
Pickles are a little like olives for me in that I’ll eat them but on other stuff. I usually enjoy Korean or Japanese pickles but seldom your standard cucumber pickles. These were really good though with a nice crunch and a bit of a sour note before you get into that spiciness. You wouldn’t really know just by looking at them but these things can pack some decent heat. Not enough that you’ll be crying for milk but enough to keep things interesting. I grabbed a couple of these to enjoy with my burger later on…and I don’t even really like pickles!
Our second appetizer was a basket of sea salt and toasted pepper chicken wings ($9). They were just okay, really. It’s hard to make fried chicken not taste good and these were right on par. The outside is crisp and the meat is moist but I didn’t think there was anything particularly special about them. I will say that when you simply season something like this with salt and pepper, there really needs to be well seasoned or it becomes very plain and bland. I actually prefer my wings with no ridiculous sauces and just a good amount of salt and pepper but these were underseasoned and just average. I hope you get at least a dozen or a pound or something of these in a $9 order otherwise, you’re really better off at Phnom Penh.
Edamame is one of my favorite snack foods. I polished off a pound or two of these things a day when I was in Japan. They’re delicious, good for you and great with beer…three qualities that usually don’t go together. Our third starter was a dish of edamame in a sweet tamarind chili sauce ($5).
I actually really enjoyed the tamarind sauce, which is a little sweet and sour with a tiny bit of heat.
After we finished off our starters, we moved on to salads. I believe we got three different ones but I didn’t see the one at the end of the table and only tried the two closer to me. This is a wild baby arugula salad ($3 for a side portion) with shaved Parmesan and fresh squeezed lemon. I could swear there wasn’t any lemon in this and without that hit of sour freshness, the bitterness of the arugula is a little overwhelming with only the salty Reggiano cheese to fend it off. Luckily, together with the vine-ripened tomatoes of the second salad ($4), I balanced out the bitterness with the sweet, fresh tomatoes.
The burgers arrived on a long platter, sliced in half. All of the burgers at Romer’s are made with “all-natural Heritage Farms range-fed Angus beef, natural Fraser Valley pork, turkey, free-run chicken or wild salmon…” so I expected quality when it came to the patties. They also all feature the same brioche bun, which is as light and fluffy as they come. The brioche absorbs flavor without getting too mushy but personally, I like crispier, chibata-style sort of buns, lightly toasted since they have some substance and are solid enough to hold even the wettest parts of a burger together without getting soggy. I wish I knew about the option to use lettuce leaves instead of a bun. I would’ve gone for that since I always think there’s an excessive amount of bread with burgers.
I tried the Magic Mushroom ($11) first, which is a beef burger topped with portobello mushrooms, arugula, herb garlic Boursin cheese and caramelized onions. There was a real lack of mushrooms on the burger I split with my three friends sitting with me and we only found a couple of small strips of portobello in it. I mean, it’s there but there isn’t enough of it to make it a mushroom burger. I enjoyed the creamy cheese and the decently cooked burger patty, which was a slight bit past medium well (they don’t ask how you want your burgers cooked) but still quite juicy.
I don’t think I’ve ever ordered turkey as a burger. Mostly because I enjoy my meat slightly less cooked than most people and you just can’t do that with turkey. I’ve never thought lean meats work well in burgers as you really need that fat to moisten and flavor everything and the So Cal Turkey Burger ($10) is a good example. The turkey is a little on the dry side but unlike the Magic Mushroom burger, the toppings including avocado, tomatoes, watercress, and red onion are abundant, giving the burger a nice fresh crunch. The soft avocados fill in for the missing fat on the turkey. The burger isn’t lacking flavor but it’s light compared to the heavy handed, bacon and cheese covered everything else.
Speaking of bacon, it comes thick and crispy on the Rodeo Star ($11). Along with the Angus beef patty, the Rodeo Star comes with thick-sliced applewood bacon, red onions, vine-ripened tomatoes, horseradish, cilantro and barbecue sauce. The barbecue sauce tastes like the primary component of this burger…actually, it’s quite difficult to taste anything else over it which is too bad because I got a nice thick slice of crispy bacon in there. It would be better if the sauce wasn’t so sweet. It seems like it’s all sweet with a little smoke. I really could’ve used something to balance it out but it just drowns out all the other parts of the burger. What horseradish? Cilantro? Where? I enjoyed this one the least of the four.
This oozy concoction is the Wicked Deadly Cheeseburger ($11). Along with the five cheeses on top of the Angus beef burger, there isn’t a whole lot. Just some red onion, greens and some Russian tarragon dressing. The cheeses are drippy goodness and work great with the burger. I’m not quite sure which types of cheese are in there but whatever…they’ve all sort of melted together anyways. My only complain would be there isn’t quite enough cheese here. There’s a halfway decent amount but if you’re going to call something a Wicked Deadly Cheeseburger, I’d expect that thing to be just exploding with cheese. The flavors are all there and all good but some more intensity (maybe a little Roquefort or another blue cheese?) would’ve been nice.
After eating all that, I couldn’t really deal with the fries. I’ve heard good things about the various specialty flavored fries but the standard ones are just okay. They’re decently crispy but still slightly oily. We got a couple of the dips as well, such as the bacon mayo ($0.60) which I wasn’t too impressed with. Surprisingly it didn’t have much bacon flavor…even though I found several chunks of bacon in it. Some of my friends said the chipotle mayo was rather good but I was full enough at that point that I couldn’t be bothered to try it all the way on the other side of the room.
Service was excellent. In some other restaurants, sitting in a private room means a member of the staff takes your order and then maybe checks in once in a blue moon. Our waitress stopped by every few minutes. She didn’t come by and ask if we needed anything every single time…that would be annoying but she would walk by every so often so that if we needed anything, she was there. Our food didn’t arrive right away but it did arrive quite quickly. It didn’t really matter since we were not in any particular hurry so we just sat around chatting without really noticing whether or not our food was slow. It really wasn’t…looking back at my pictures, our appetizers arrived about 15 minutes after we sat down and our burgers came 45 minutes later. Keep in mind that we had edamame, wings and salads in between so while our server apologized for the wait, I didn’t feel like that was necessary. However, it’s nice to know the restaurant cares enough to stress about those extra few minutes.
Our set menu was $20 a person and came out to roughly $30 after we were done (gratuity is automatic for large groups…and we paid for our friend who’s birthday it was). Individually, had you ordered everything that came on the set menu and split between 4 people, it’s roughly the same price ($78 / 4). That’s rather decent value for money as we got to try a lot of different things on the menu.
The burgers were cooked well and in general, while some of the items were underwhelming, nothing was necessarily bad. My only real criticism is that the individual toppings on each burger…there isn’t quite enough for the burger to really taste the way you think it will after reading the menu. The Magic Mushroom burger doesn’t quite have enough mushroom and the Wicked Deadly Cheeseburger isn’t as deadly as I would like. It’s not that they’re not good but those names just make you expect more.
I’m told I missed a few showstoppers at Romer’s like their donuts and the pork burger so I will definitely be back. Dare I say it? Even that vegetarian burger with the portobello mushrooms, grilled eggplant and roasted zucchini looks delicious! This is an impressive burger joint. You can tell a lot of planning, thought and attention to detail went into not only the food but just the whole place. I don’t think it’s quite “there” yet…I think there’s room for improvement but I’m certainly interested enough for a return visit.
