My wife and I took a few days off this week and we decided to give the new Bobby Flay Burger Palace in Eatontown, NJ a quick try because my wife and I both think Bobby Flay comes across as a jerk on TV but his food is usually pretty darn good.
We drove down to Monmouth Mall and got to Bobby’s Burger Palace around 2pm on a weekday. We had no idea what to expect so we showed up with empty stomachs and high expectations based on our previous experiences at Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill, which offers some phenomenal and unique dishes. We were a little curious to see if Bobby’s Burgers would be the same.
The line to get into the place was out the door even on a chilly afternoon and at first we figured we’d be standing for a while, but once we got inside the doorway we learned the first little secret to Bobby’s Burger Palace: it’s small. Really small. Though it looks large from the outside this “burger palace” really was more like a “burger joint.” I know Bobby Flay is short, but he’d have to stand about 12 inches off the ground to think of this little place as a “palace.”
The Bobby’s Burger Palace in Eatontown is not much bigger than a standard McDonald’s. This would, unfortunately, not be the last time we’d invoke the image of McDonald’s when talking about BBP. The line to the cash register was only about 25 feet long, so when we got in the door we saw that there were really only about five or six parties ahead of us, all looking up and down the large menu boards on the side.
The menu at Bobby’s Burger Palace is limited, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There are 10 different burgers to choose from, a couple sandwiches and salad options, two types of grilled cheese, a few fry options, about seven milkshake options and a few sodas. That’s about it.
You can “crunchify” any burger for free. Crunchify is Bobby’s Flay term for “putting potato chips on it.” And if you don’t like beef you can get any of the burger offerings made with a grilled chicken breast, a turkey burger or “topless” which means no bun.
We dutifully waited in line and my wife got an L.A. Burger, while I went for a three cheese grilled cheese. We split a vanilla milkshake, an order of sweet potato fries and an order of onion rings, mostly out of curiosity. We were given a little plastic number tent like those the ones you remember from the 1970’s. After a few minutes of waiting two seats opened up and my wife and I were two chairs facing each other amidst a bunch of strangers.
Bobby Flay wants you to sit with some strangers and eat this.
This was our second real surprise: communal dining. There are no individual tables, just long stretch tables where you sit in comfy stools that are bolted to the floor with a bunch of people you probably don’t really want to be that close to. My wife and I were crowded between people with winter coats and jabbing arms and loud nasally voices all of whom had apparently bathed in cologne. Ahh, New Jersey.
Some of the tables were curved and some were angled at such a way as to actually take up even more space than they had to. This is, I suppose, “hip” and “cool” to some people, but judging from the conversations around us it seemed kinda stupid. That’s the second secret of Bobby’s Burger Palace: by limiting the number of seats in the place and making the cashier line short it ALWAYS looks busy and makes people think, “Oh, this must be worth it.” Limiting supply is a great way to artificially increase demand.
Our food came out in about 10 minutes, but all was not well. Our sweet potato fries were cold, our onion rings just lukewarm and we didn’t have our milkshake. There aren’t really waiters at Bobby’s Burger Palace, but there are a lot of employees cleaning up tables, bringing food out and doing waitery things. At the Eatontown BBP the number of tattoos and piercings on the waitstaff far outnumbered those in the general population and the mostly older suburban clientele. One of these waiter-type people immediately appeared and asked how everything was. I mentioned my lack of a milkshake and she immediately apologized and went to look for it. Meanwhile I had noticed people that were behind us in line getting their orders, including milkshakes, as well.
Our waiter person appeared again and said the milkshake would be out in a moment and actually used the phrase, “It was a computer glitch. Those darn computers!” Umm, yeah. I’m sure human error had nothing to do with it. Meanwhile, we ate.
The food was good. That’s about it. Good.
Just good.
Not great. Not amazing. Not worth waiting more than 10 minutes for. Not unique. Just… kinda okay. The sweet potato fries, other than being cold, were passable. I could almost see the “RESTAURANT BULK FOOD FROZEN SWEET POTATO FRIES” label stamped on them. The onion rings were slightly better, being made of large onion rounds and not just thinly sliced rings. The portions were just right. Next to us was a little carousel of dipping sauces such as ketchup, “burger sauce” (steak sauce), jalapeno sauce and some sort of smoky ketchup. We squirted each sauce on the plate and dipped and tasted. Again, it was flavorful but it was hardly cutting-edge or particularly wonderful.
My wife’s burger was pretty good, but nothing that a good diner wouldn’t offer for about the same price. Bobby’s Burger Palace only cooks burgers to medium, so you’re out of luck if you like it any other way. My Grilled Cheese Deluxe included several different cheeses, including goat cheese, as well as tomato and bacon. It was a thin sandwich but it was creamy and crunchy and it worked well.
Our milkshake finally arrived and we both tried it. It tasted exactly like all the other vanilla milkshakes in the world and they all taste almost like, yes, a McDonald’s vanilla milkshake. Again, there was nothing out of the ordinary or even exciting about this milkshake other than the fact that it came in a glass that was smaller than the sodas and it came out a little bit late.
We left Bobby’s Burger Palace feeling as though we’d gotten a decent diner meal in a strange setting. Most of the burgers are around $7.50 or so and the fries ring in around $3.00 and the milkshake pinged us for $5.00.
Overall it was a good place to get a burger but no better than any other restaurant in the United States. If you like sitting with strangers, like average food and you can’t stand the idea of not eating at a FoodTV chef’s vanity project restaurant, then give it a shot. If, however, you’re hungry and want to relax I suggest you go for a burger just about anywhere else.
Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill is damn fine eating.
Bobby Flay’s Burger Palace is just good eating, dammit.