Review #93 – North Ridge Pub (Raleigh, NC)

Don

If you are interested in paying top dollar for a food service burger, have I got the place for you. North Ridge Pub will cook your burger anyway you want it as long as it is well done. That is probably not fair, they will probably make it a briquet if you want it well done. But my “medium rare” request was changed to Trump Special. This combined with the lack of any meaningful flavor in the patty took me back to the days of cafeteria burgers. They do give you two slices of cheese, which is a bonus, lettuce, tomato slice and onions on a brick hard kaiser roll. I had to drive a little extra and spend a little more to reinforce my regret. I give this “burger” a 2. Not happy with the result but at least I didn’t get sick.

Michael

Let me just get this out of the way first. I feel for restaurants now. With the quarantine, places are barely hanging on and doing the best that they can. North Ridge Pub has taken all precautions that you should in this new COVID world. The servers and hostess all wore masks. They only had outdoor seating available for dine-in. We were greeted promptly by someone to take our order. When it was ready, our server brought it to us promptly.

That’s all I can really say about North Ridge Pub that is nice. The burger was complete garbage.

I ordered the Asian Burger which is grilled then dipped in Teriyaki Soy Sauce and served with spinach, mushrooms, tomato, and cilantro garlic mayo. The kaiser roll (really?) was so hard on the bottom that it was inedible. I worried about my crowns. It was the only repository of the soy sauce, so it was an odd combination of mushy on the burger surface and rock hard on the outer surface. Atop the factory-pattied (to be fair, it could have been pattied at the restaurant, but was done with a press) well done burger was a fistful of wilted spinach. Upon further exploration, the mushrooms were there but barely registered on the flavor radar. The tomato dutifully played its part in this mess by floating in a sea of cilantro garlic mayo. I soldiered on for about half of the burger and didn’t bother finishing. It just wasn’t worth it.

In dealing with the economic shutdown, restaurants have been reducing the number of items on their menus to reduce costs. Perhaps North Ridge should just stop serving burgers until they get back to full strength again. I am not saying you should avoid this place. Restaurants — local ones especially — should be supported. For Pete’s sake, though, don’t get a burger here. I give it a 1.5 out of 5.

Overall rating 1.75 out of 5

Overall ranking 92 out of 93