Burger Quest :: Bobby’s Burger Palace

This wasn’t a planned outing. It was on my way to another Burger Quest trip (Holstein’s) while in Vegas for my daughter’s dance competition that I spotted Bobby’s Burger Palace, (yes, that Bobby) along the way, all glass and shiny and Vegas glitzy. Perhaps it called out my name as I swam along the drunken crowed. All I knew was that I had to try it. I had to work it in to my already impossible schedule.

There was a small window. I had two hours on one of the days of competition between my daughter’s last dance and the awards ceremony for that category. If I ventured out alone, if I hot-stepped it through the casino and down the Strip, I could do it.

And so I did it, getting all bubbly with sweat while doing so. With all the effort, I was a little perturbed when I sauntered up to the To-Go counter at BBP only to be ignored completely by the woman who hustled behind it. I didn’t even get as smile or the “just one second” finger. While being ignored, I had a couple minutes to glance at the menu, where I spotted a brilliant grouping of words: Cactus Pear Margarita. And that’s when I decided – I still had plenty of time; and the staff behind the sit-down counter across the way seemed happy, even eager for customers; and hey, if you’ve seen one dance competition awards show, you’ve seen too many of them – I needed to hang out at BBP and enjoy the whole burger (and Cactus Pear Margarita) experience.

My choice was a hard one with so many burgers that sounded special and promising. The Crunchburger with American cheese and potato chips piqued my interest, yet I ordered one called The Dallas as I’m a sucker for BBQ sauce and Jack cheese. And I figured the coleslaw served just under bun would be a cool and tangy companion to the meaty cheesy robust flavors of the burger.

Unfortunately, I was sorely underwhelmed with my choice. Initially, I blamed my selected protein, the ground turkey patty. Turkey burgers are a pretty easy find these days as restaurants attempt to cater to a variety of palates, including those who like healthier options. I don’t do turkey for health reasons. I just have a long and storied history with cows (as noted in other Dianderthal posts) and don’t like to eat them. If I wasn’t such a picky eater, I’d probably be a vegetarian (I’ve tried!). But I do poultry.

In keeping things healthy, some places, such as BBP, use white meat for their turkey patties. This was the mistake I initially identified here, as the patty was dry and lacked anything but that wimpy birdy flavor reminiscent of a sad Thanksgiving. I might forgive them this since turkey burgers are typically the beef burger’s awkward little sister; an afterthought. But this is a burger place. If you’re going to do a burger place right, you gotta make sure that all your offerings – chicken, angus beef, veggie – are on point. After dwelling on it some, I realized that my disappointment with the burger didn’t alone lie with the meat. I didn’t get a spark from anywhere – the cheese, the slaw, the sauce were all very gray and dull. A better assembling would have perked up a bland turkey patty, but that didn’t happen here. And like Forrest Gump says, that’s all I’ve got to say about that.

What I can get excited about are my drink and the sweet potato fries. The drink especially made my sweaty walk-run to BBP worth it. It was a smooth and slushy cup of fun, despite the brain freeze it gave me.

But this here quest is about burgers, not margaritas (although I wouldn’t mind partaking in a margarita quest). Here’s how Bobby’s Burger Palace stacked up.

Bobby’s Burger Palace
3750 S. Las Vegas Blvd. in Vegas and other lcoations

Official Dianderthal Burger Quest Burger List:
1. Hawkins House of Burgers turkey burger with everything (mayo, mustard, pickles, tomato, red onion, lettuce), cheese added
2. PCB (Plan Check Burger) at Plan Check with americanized dashi cheese, ketchup leather, schmaltz onions, mixed pickles, crunch bun
3. 25 Degrees Number One Burger (turkey subbed for beef) with caramelized onions, crescenza, prelibato gorgonzola, bacon, arugula, thousand island
4. Father’s Office Burger with arugula, caramelized onions, Gruyere, applewood bacon, and maytag blue cheese
5. Island’s California Flyer turkey burger (BBQ sauce, “Island Reds” – fried onion straws, pepper jack cheese, lettuce, tomato & mayo)
6.Golden State turkey burger with provolone, lettuce, tomato, red onion, aioli, and ketchup, (added grilled onions)
7. Holstein’s California Turkey Burger with sprouts, tomato, avocado, cucumber claw, pepperjack cheese, and Russian dressing
8. Yeah! Burger (Make It Your Own – turkey patty, whole wheat bun, pepper jack cheese, sriracha mayo, ketchup, grilled onions, honey mustard)
9. The Habit (Veggie burger made like a Charburger, with mayo, pickle, tomato, lettuce, caramelized onions, cucumber, and sprouts)
10. The Counter (Build Your Own – turkey patty, grilled onions, cheddar cheese, chipotle aioli, ketchup)
11. Burger City Grill (The BCG, turkey patty, pickles, grilled onions)
12. The Dallas at Bobby’s Burger Palace – spice crusted ground turkey patty with coleslaw, jack cheese, BBQ sauce, and pickles

Fry Factor
1. Island’s fries with ranch dressing
2. Golden State fried sweet potato wedges with garlic aioli (and a few with curry ketchup)
3. Holstein’s sweet potato fries
4. 25 Degrees Half & Half (sweet potato and regular fries)
5. Father’s Office sweet potato fries with blue cheese aioli
6. The Counter 50-50 fries (half regular, half sweet Ps)
7. The Habit french fries
8. Plan Check sweet potato waffle fries and regular fries
9. Bobby’s Burger Palace sweet potato fries
10. Burger City Grill fries
11. Yeah! Burger sweet potato fries
12. Hawkins House of Burgers fries

Grown Up Home School :: Summer Edition

What are you doing this summer?

Besides a couple of trips to Vegas, one up north to visit my parents, and a short vacation in the Midwest just before Labor Day, my big plans are to go back to school. I’m good at school. Counting Kindergarten, I’ve spent more than half my life in school. Plus, I’ve been an instructor at a city college for 15 years, and spent years of my public health career as a health educator. And still, I can’t get enough edumacation. There’s nothing like building new skills, learning details about topics you may have not known much about before. It’s wonderful to stretch your brain, challenge yourself, move your brain off its comfy couch.

So I’m starting something called Grown Up Home School. It will it be free, it will it be fun, and it will be an experiment. Not to take away from all those fancy institutions that I borrowed thousands of money to attend and learn from, but with all the tools and technology available today, and all the smart and wonderful people willing to share their wisdom and talents, I figured that I could put together a course or two for myself to keep me engaged this summer.

Grown Up Home School (the Summer Edition) will begin on Monday, June 30th. For any of you who’d like to join me as a peer, I’ll be posting information and templates next week on how you can develop your own class for the summer, along with ideas for course topics. My two summer classes will be “Build a Better Brown Dinner” and “Managing & Marketing Your Blog,” which will follow curricula that include objectives, schedules, reading, assignments, and perhaps even a test. And grading too – I’ll need a way to assess my commitment to these classes and if I worked hard to achieve optimal outcomes. Whether you develop your own course or just keep up with how I’m doing over the summer, I hope you’ll follow along and share your ideas, your input, and your support. More soon. Keep learning (and eating).

Vacation :: Gone

I launched this blog a year ago on my first day of vacation. My intention was to chronicle my summer since, for the first time in years, I’d be spending much of the season away from the LBC. Seriously, aside from a few work trips here and there, I hadn’t done much (adult) traveling before then. And the blog would be proof of my away time, with a bit of commentary to go with the photos I snapped. This site has since morphed into something else that I can’t quite describe except to say that it’s very me (with lots of food).

But here I find myself again, on vacation. The plan was to post daily; yet, here I am, almost ready to return to work and I’ve not said a word. So a summary will have to do. Here it goes:

Started off my nine days of worklessness hanging with an old school homie and her amazing, impressive friends (I think we’re kind of a crew now, me the least fascinating of the bunch… but that’s a different story). We didn’t spend much time there but enough to check out Questlove spinning (some of the lesser known) Michael Jackson tunes at Arena nightclub in Hollywood. It’s been years since I’ve been up at ‘da club – not much has changed, not even the welcoming aroma of bacon-wrapped dogs when you step outside in a tipsy haze.

Questlove spinning at “Remember the Time” tribute at Arena

Next was Vegas, an annual trip thanks to my daughter’s participation in a competition dance team. The KAR (Kids Artistic Review) National Competition has been held at the MGM Grand the last several years. While we stayed in the casino last year, this time we wanted to try out the MGM suites, AKA The Signature, since we’d be calling the place home for a full week. Much better, I’ve gotta say. Only sucky part is that you have to valet, which made for an unfortunate and embarrassing arrival for our us, our car loaded down with dishes, utensils, Tupperward, at least five bags of chips, pancake mix, fruit, cereal boxes, pretzels, an ice chest … Oh, and our luggage. By the way, I’m not an SUV/mini-van mom so it was quite a feat that we managed to get everything in the car in the first place (one of the three of my daughters who drove up is six-feet-one). It was quite another hurdle to unload us and all our crap at the valet station. Lesson learned, but really not because I’ll likely bring the same stuff next year.

Me a The Signature/Lazy River

What I love about the MGM is their lazy river. I don’t know what makes it lazy (“drunken” would better describe it), or how it’s technically a river since it connects to itself. But I don’t really care. I love making my way around, or finding a nook to tuck into and watch the drunkies float by. Biggest problem this year was the 115 degree weather.

Other Problems:Didn’t charge fancy camera battery and forgot charger so after 20 or so snaps, dead. Had to rely on I-cameras.
Husband does Vegas differently than I do.
Teenagers like to stay in hotel room all day and keep the “Do not disturb” button lit so housekeeping never enters.
Stressed about feeling that refrigerator is not cold enough but spent to much money on food to throw it all out. Eat and pray.

But, I did get to enjoy a few yardsticks. My husband brought back the one he purchased last year, and was kind enough to buy me one of my own.

A yard of mango-rum deliciousness

I did manage to do some new things. We visited the Hoover Dam, where it was damn hot! But still pretty darn cool.

Trying to act cool when its 115 degrees

Is it really that hot?

And I went to my very first Vegas show – Criss Angel.

Criss Angel/Bad Camera

And sampled soft drinks from around the world at the Coca-Cola store.

Ready to take some risks

I’ll stick with Diet Coke, thanks

And while we didn’t do much eating out (Vegas is expensive!!), we did do one cheesy celebrity restaurant: BurGR by Gordon Ramsay.

Fire wall

Southern Yardbird (Chicken) Burger

Yes, I behaved very much like a tourist while there, but why not. That’s what makes vacations great.

Roshan Fegen – You’ll know him if you have a Tween

Wow!

I met Whoopie!

My dance kid with Sophea Lucia

And so I’m back. Not really on vacation any more since it’s now the weekend and I head back to work on Monday. But I’m still in a Vegas state of mind.

Vegas, Baby!

Up next, beautiful and bankrupt Stockton, California.

Smashburger

What I like about it:
1. Build your own
2. Garlic fries

Tubing

I did half a lap of the lazy river wearing – gasp, scream! – my bikini. Why, how, what you ask? I took a tip from my friend Veronica, taking advantage of my blue-green friend, the tube. Did I feel bad, using it to cover up my scratched up, stretch-marked belly? No. Did I hold him tight around myself, knocking people out of my way so tht my inflatable mid-riff cover up didn’t expose anything? Yes. Will I do it again? With the temp at 104, no doubt about it.

Belly hurts

I loved my enchiladas but I should have quit after one. Since my diet, I can’t take down plates like I used to. I forced the second one down and took the last one home. No fridge in the hotel room so I’ll probably have to let the third one go. But it’s just sitting there – calling me and my aching belly to eat it, to not leg it go to waste. What is a girly-woman to do?

Fancy Mex

So I heard about Diego’s this past weekend while watching Chopped. One of the chefs was from Diego’s at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Great timing, as the MGM Grand is what I’ve called home these last few days. I wasn’t going to try the place because no fancy pants Mexican spot can mess with my favorite place in the world, Los Compadres. But the hub wanted to try it out. And I’m not one to turn down a dinner date – especially if chips and salsa are expected. I entered a skeptic, a hater – ready to tell everyone on Yelp! to take their dollars to Taco Bell or Baja Fresh.

The chips came served with three salsas: a green, a roasted tomato, and a pico. The green was cool. The roasted was okay. And then I tried the pico. The pico! It was beyond delicioso. In addition to the salsas, there was also a trio of flavored salts that kicked everything up a story or two.

Less pessimistic.

So I ordered the chicken enchiladas Suizas just for fun since I knew they couldn’t touch Los Compadres. Well, I’m guessing you have figured out by now how this story ends. Stupendously. Ridiculously well. Phenomenally. Better than LC’s? That, I won’t say. But I’m not going to write off fancy mex so quickly anymore. Especially if someone else is treating.

First drink in Vegas

A $22 frozen mixed berry mojito mess. Strange flavor and only about a shot of rum in the whole thing. That’s Vega-nomics for you. With the $10 Subway sandwich and $3 sodas, I’ll be broke by Tuesday.