Romer’s Burger Bar: Just Keep on Roaming…

hippoCHAN had just gotten off her lab around 9PM, so she was completely famished. Since we were around UBC, we decided to check out Romer’s Burger Bar in Kitsilano.

While hippoCHAN was hungry, she didn’t want to gorge on heavy foods. Thus, we both ordered the Grilled Lemongrass Chicken Salad ($14.95) listed under “Big Salads.” The salad was composed of boneless chicken breast, cucumber, celery, corn, red onion, roasted peppers and mango salad with a honey citrus dressing.

Straight up, we hated the salads. There was barely any chicken: 3 tiny strips that didn’t even make up half a chicken breast, unless they use baby chicks. What’s more, they didn’t even remotely taste like lemongrass! … more like just grass.

Boring was the overarching theme for this dish. Boring citrus honey dressing that tasted of nothing; it eventually got replaced with a mustard vinaigrette. Boring greens that tasted of water.

Not only did these fail dishes cost us $14.95 each, but also they costed us 25 minutes. That’s right – 25 minutes to toss together some vegetables and grill three minuscule strips of chicken.

The manager recognized our dissatisfaction with our salads and tried to explain why they sucked. His reasoning was that the salads were new items JUST placed on the menu that night… I call BS because the menu file uploaded onto their website indicated that the menu was finalized in October. We ate there on November 15th. Despite that technicality, crap food shouldn’t leave the kitchen, even if they are new items.

Because we were still hungry, we decided to order a burger. They are called Romer’s BURGER after all, not Romer’s SALAD. So we ordered the Romer’s Righteous Rib Burger ($12.25). It was not “righteous.” The description read angus beef, applewood bacon, braised short rib, sweet onions, gorgonzola garlic sauce and fresh thyme.

Much like the salad, the burger was an utter bore. It just tasted of garlic sauce – that’s it. The meat was dry. Burger was teensy. And no side included.

By this point, the manager knew we were pissed. As a result, he comped the burger. It was nice to see that the manager actually cared about his customers; he kept checking in with us and took our feedback well. Still, I don’t think I’ll be returning to Romer’s.