 Smashed & Stacked Burger |
 Housemade Veggie Burger |
San Diego Burger Club went to Rock Bottom Brewery in La Jolla for lunch today. We arrived around 11:45am. The restaurant was not very crowded at that time (or throughout the lunch hour), but we had to wait to be seated, wait to have our order taken, and wait nearly an hour for our food to arrive. Once the food arrived the reactions to it varied greatly, with grades ranging from C+ to A-. The average of the grades came to a B, so Rock Bottom gets a B.
The burgers generally were good, though each seemed to have certain flaws. The patties on that Smashed & Stacked burger are quite small, with the result that the bun-to-burger ratio is way off. Some people felt their burgers were not well seasoned. People who ordered burgers with bacon received bacon that was undercooked. The Housemade Veggie Burger, pictured above, received high marks though. Also, a number of the burgers came with a “signature pub sauce” that seems to be a spicy variant on Thousand Island dressing, and the sauce was good and had a nice kick to it.
In general we liked the fries, though there were several comments about them being oversalted, and in my case I felt they were a bit underdone. You can order the fries crispy / more well done though, which I probably will do if I ever return. One member switched out the fries for “seasonal vegetables”. Although he liked the “seasonal vegetables”, be warned that today the “seasonal vegetables” consisted of corn with some spices and cheese — not exactly the green vegetables one might have expected.
Basically we thought the food at Rock Bottom was acceptable but not outstanding. The service, however, was severely lacking. The wait for the food to arrive was much too long, and during the hour that we waited for the food to arrive it never occurred to our waitress to bring silverware so we had to wait for that as well.
If you are in the La Jolla / UTC area and want to kill an hour and a half eating an acceptable burger, I guess Rock Bottom Brewery is the place to be. If you want an equal or better burger with better service for the around the same price or less though, Draft Republic, Eureka, and Five Guys are just down the street and are better bets.