Review #75 – Acme Food & Beverage Company (Carrboro, NC)

We should know better. We really should. When an otherwise excellent restaurant offers an afterthought burger on the menu, skip it. We’ve learned that the hard way too many times.

But, like Wile E. Coyote, we were drawn to Acme. We couldn’t help ourselves. It seemed so promising.

And like the coyote, we were doomed to disappointment.

Chuck Jones, the creator of the roadrunner and coyote, famously laid down the rules:

We broke rule #3 first. We are indeed fanatics. We cannot stop. If there’s a burger around, we’ll try it, even when we know better.

Then we fell prey to rule #2, the failure of the Acme products. What looked so good, so promising, especially in light of the other wonderful items on the menu, just left us dangling over a cliff holding a small sign reading “Help!” before we plunged to our cartoon doom.

Carolyn Coyote’s reaction:

The Acme burger.  Mine was a study in chronological disappointment, which is to say that the more time passed and the more I ate, the more disappointed I became.  Meep meep, says the Road Runner.  Burp…ugh….says I.  The burger came out of the kitchen with some obvious glitches but no dealbreakers.  The criss-cross bacon was not the ideal but it can work under certain circumstances.  In hindsight, perhaps my over-hungry brain simply saw what it wanted to see.  My first bite wasn’t bad!  The meat itself tasted….mmmoookay.

After the next bite and the bite after that, it became clear that the burger build was atrocious and the bacon gummed up the works. By the end, I was viewing the greasy mess of what was a burger on my plate with disgust and not a little bit of self-loathing.  2 out of 5.

Michael Coyote’s reaction:

I have a feeling that the Acme burger is what would end up happening if the Coyote actually caught the Road Runner. Wile E. Coyote has spent his life in constant pursuit of that scrawny bird. Why? Is all that effort worth what minuscule meat is on those bones? I mean, they weigh about a pound on the high end. Even if it is not about the meal but a Captain Ahab-like pursuit of this creature, what next? Wile E. is left to wander the desert cleaning up the wreckage of his myriad of Acme contraptions remembering what once was.

Such was our experience at Acme. There was a lot of build up because the food there is outstanding. However, once I got my hands on the burger. It was a real disappointment. The stringy bacon was haphazardly placed on the over-cooked patty. The beef had decent flavor but nothing outstanding. The cheese fused the patty and the bacon together which made rebuilding a disaster.

Acme is a terrific restaurant with a less than average burger. They should do themselves a favor and just take it off the menu. 2.5 out of 5.

Chad Coyote’s Reaction:

Nope. Just, nope. We did indeed run afoul of rule #2. The Acme product failed us badly. The burger was overcooked and underseasoned. The bacon was limp. The cheese was bland. All of the wonderful promise disintegrated before my eyes and I was left wondering how it could have gone so, so wrong. 2.5 out of 5.

Overall rating: 2.33

Overall rank: 72 out of 75