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Ate: May 19, 2006 Published: May 21, 2006 $ We had such a good time this past Saturday evening checking out a local restaurant that's growing and expanding, so we decided to do it again this week. For years, Hamburger Joe's has been the best-kept secret in North Myrtle Beach, hidden just one block off of Highway 17 just across from Barefoot Landing. They've recently added another location down in Surfside Beach. We hadn't been to the original location in years, and had never checked out the new location. We took it on ourselves to see whether or not the new Hamburger Joe's lived up to our memories of the original place. Since this is the height of bike week, it took quite a while for us to the restaurant. Motorcycles were everywhere, and every parking place we saw was jammed with Harleys. But when we got to Hamburger Joe's, the parking lot was relatively uncrowded. As we walked in, we saw part of the reason. There's a big sign on the door stating that the restaurant does not accept credit cards. In this era of debit cards, a cash-only policy has to cut into your customer base. After making a quick check to see if we had enough cash, we went inside. The Surfside location is decorated just like their North Myrtle location and has the same informal atmosphere. We helped ourselves to a table and began checking out their menu, which looked pretty much the same as we remembered from years ago. Our first course was an order of ten of their gold wings. Why ten instead of a dozen? I don't know either, but they were good. The wings themselves were fried crisp but still juicy, and the sauce was a perfect mix of sweet and heat. The cloying sweetness of the honey that gave the sauce its golden color was offset with some vinegar and spices that gave the sauce a good tangy zing. The wings were a bit spicier than we expected, but since we love spicy food, neither one of us was complaining. About the only thing about the wings that disappointed us was the watered-down bleu cheese dressing that came with them. Our cheeseburgers and fries arrived as we were polishing off the wings. The fries looked good and smelled good, but the burgers looked smaller and thinner than either of us remembered from the original location. The fries lived up to their look and smell, they were crisp and fresh out of the oil, quick-fried to keep them tender inside. Unfortunately, the burgers also lived up their appearances. My bride had ordered hers with chili, slaw and onions. She didn't get much of any of those things. She had been hoping for a big, sloppy chili burger. What she got was not particularly memorable, with the chili looking more like loose wet ground beef than anything else, and not having any spice or flavor. Overall, she found her cheeseburger to be dry and bland. Mine wasn't any better. I went with lettuce, tomatoes and onions. I suspect that without the moisture of the chili or the slaw, mine was even drier than hers. We were both disappointed. You would think that with the word "Hamburger" in a restaurant's name, that it would have really good burgers. The wings were good, the fries were good, but the burgers were not something either of us would particularly enjoy having again. We left Hamburger Joe's with mixed emotions. It's nice to see a local restaurant grow and expand with new locations. But it's also a bit sad to see the same restaurant engage in the cost-cutting methods that robs the place of what made it special in the first place. |
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