Heck’s Bar and Burgers

I had din­ner with Five Dol­lar Beer last night. We went to Heck­’s Cafe over on Bridge Avenue, because they appar­ent­ly have the best burg­ers in town. The burg­ers were good, but if they are the best burg­ers in town then Cleve­land sore­ly needs a real­ly good burg­er joint. Some­thing akin to CJ’s out of South Bend.

The place itself has that utter­ly unas­sum­ing look from the out­side that tends to char­ac­ter­ize most good burg­er places. Upon enter­ing I was greet­ed by a hand-stitched sam­pler inform­ing me that I would be seat­ed in a moment. That was cool. It was kind of weird to see the bar full of wine right behind it though. “Wine and burg­ers?” I thought. We were seat­ed by a wait­er in black pants and a white shirt, in a nat­u­ral­ly lit atri­um with a spi­ral stair­case and plant-life every­where. The nap­kins were cloth. This is a burg­er place?

We ordered rather quick­ly. I ordered the Rocky Riv­er burg­er [swiss cheese, bacon, sour cream, mush­rooms] with Cajun fries and a choco­late milk­shake with the meal. It arrived about ten min­utes lat­er [to me it felt like ten hours because I was hun­gry], we chowed down, paid, and left.

On the way home we dis­cussed the place. I was­n’t impressed by their burg­ers, they were good but not amaz­ing. We did a bit of math and deter­mined that the burg­ers are about $5.50 bucks apiece and the fries [which were real­ly real­ly good] are about $3.00. So for a five dol­lar ham­burg­er the qual­i­ty was accept­able.

The ham­burg­er pat­ty was about a half-inch thick and did­n’t take up the whole bun. I had about three bites of bun left­over when all the meat was gone. I was also a bit dis­ap­point­ed in their burg­er selec­tion, I’d like more vari­ety. Heck­’s does­n’t live up to the hype, it seems like it was try­ing to be more upscale [but with less char­ac­ter] than it need­ed to be [indi­vid­ual ketchup bot­tles?].

There has to be some place in Cleve­land where I can get a 10oz ham­burg­er with tons of dif­fer­ent fix­ins, the condi­ments on the table, a pitch­er of beer, loud music, a per­fuc­n­to­ry wait staff, and a grill god in the kitchen. Any­body know of one?

Plain Deal­er Review

8 thoughts on “Heck’s Bar and Burgers”

  1. I have to agree with Adam. Though the burg­er (I got a Rogue Burg­er — served with bacon and topped with Roque­fort cheese) was cer­tain­ly *good*, I found it hard to believe that, as a large hand­ful of signs and awards told us, upon enter­ing, that they were the “Best Burg­ers in Cleve­land” and my medi­um was a hair away from being a “well” (try as I might, I only saw the very slight­est of red in the cen­ter). But, they were priced well (I thought), the ambiance was pret­ty good, though I was a bit dis­ap­point­ed to be led through the area with the gor­geous oak booths to the back area, with plas­tic tables and, again, the burg­ers were cer­tain­ly not bad, just not “the best I’d ever had in Cleve­land”

    I do dis­agree with one aspect of the PD review linked to though. I found the san­i­ta­tion of the place to be very good. The kitchen was open (i.e. vis­i­ble to guests) and, pass­ing by it, I found it to be very clean and orga­nized. The wait­er was atten­tive, but not too over­bear­ing and I nev­er felt like the clean­li­ness was­n’t up to snuff.

  5. thanks for acti­vat­ing me, adam. hee hee. yeah, i have to admit, for a veg­e­tar­i­an liv­ing in ohio, i spent a rather inor­di­nate amount of time read­ing about burg­ers in texas.

  6. To be fair, I live just around the cor­ner and eat at Hecks with some fre­quen­cy. They have tend­ed to be real­ly hit or miss late­ly. When I first went, the burg­er was amaz­ing — huge and well pro­por­tioned to the bun, cooked a per­fect medi­um rare, etc. etc. Late­ly though, it’s been let­ting me down a bit. The crab­cakes are typ­i­cal­ly real­ly yum­my, high crab per­cent­age, crispy out­side, moist inside…but I went there for my birth­day and they were just sog­gy and greasy.

    The best burg­er I’ve had in Cleve­land was actu­al­ly a slid­er I had over at the Vel­vet Tan­go Room at one of their clambakes…not real­ly an every­day option though. So, if you find a good burg­er place, please let us all know!!

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