2011-12-09 Lunch @ Red Robin

803 Thurlow Street, Vancouver, BC

604-662-8288

The boring menu at Red Robin rarely changes, but the food has always been quite consistent.  This restaurant chain has been around forever and I have always like it.  This visit was another work lunch gathering and we opted to come here since it's only two blocks away.

To start, I ordered Red's Popcorn Shrimp.  The breading was a bit hard and the shrimp was bland.  I did not like the accompanied sweet dip.  I wouldn't order this again.

 

I had the Jim Beam BBQ Burger, a somewhat new addition to its burger menu.  It came on a brioche bun with BBQ sauce and caramelized onions.  For extra charge, I added onion straws for good measure.  With the presence of a sweet BBQ sauce, the caramelized onions were not needed, the burger became too sweet.  The onion straws did add a nice added a nice texture to the burger, but nothing fancy.  Overall, I enjoyed the burger and I'd order it again, however, I'd hold off the caramelized onions and add the onion straws instead.

2011-02-04 Quick Lunch @ Red Robin

803 Thurlow Street, Vancouver, BC

604-662-8288

We took advantage of Buddha Girl's birthday offer (from Red Robin e-club) and went for a free burger.

Once you sign up, about a week or so prior to your birthday, you'll get this email from Red Robin, print it out and get a free burger.  Be careful, you only get to view the email twice, so print it immediately.  This coupon is usually good till one week after your birthday.

Since Buddha Girl doesn't eat beef, she opted for Chicken Tenders, and used her coupon to order my burger.  These chicken strips were pretty standard, they're chicken filets, not over-breaded and cooked just right so there was still some juice.

For the burger, we got the Royal Burger, yup, that's bacon and egg on the burger.  For around $12, this was priced well, actually, it's a better value than Earls, the only problem was that it's pretty boring.  It's not bad, but it's just not great.  When I had the Earls burger, you could taste the seasoning on the grill.  Unfortunately, there's no real char or griddle taste.  I recall watching the food network show "Unwrapped" and it showed that Red Robin cooks their burgers on a conveyor, kind of what they do at BK.  I don't know if that's how it's done in Canada, but that would explain why it may be lacking "something" in the taste.  One thing I do have to compliment about the Red Robin on Thurlow (at Robson), the service was good and attentive, we saw the manager making sure everything was okay, and the waitress was on top of her game. 

Does anyone have any story about this bug?  I see it in front of the Starbucks at Robson and Thurlow all the time.