Acadia Cafe

The Acadia Cafe is located in the Cedar-Riverside area of Minneapolis (actually right at the intersection of Cedar and Riverside, just south of the 7 Corners area). It's not so much a cafe, I'd say, as they also have a full menu and bar (with an enormous beer selection) and live music nearly every night, but the name is a holdover from when they used to be a bona-fide cafe in their previous location on Franklin Ave. But the name's not important -- what I really care about are the cheeseburgers.

According to their menu, The Acadia makes their burgers "fresh each day from humanely grown, all-natural, hormone and antibiotic-free cattle" -- promising indeed. They offer a few burger option, but as per my normal modus operandi I stuck with a relatively basic cheeseburger -- meat cooked medium, cheese of some unspecified variety, lettuce, tomato, and onion. And luckily, the menu even mentioned that pickles were included, so I asked to omit them. Total with a side of fries was $7.55.

The burger arrived looking promising -- a nicely toasted bun, fully melted cheese, a few half-circles of red onion (always my preference when eaten raw on a burger), a large tomato slice, and a nice big leaf of green-leaf lettuce. The patty looked to be about 1/3 lb and was nicely seared. I noticed that the bun had a slight yellowish tint, perhaps implying some sort of egg bun, as well as some onion baked into it -- interesting!

The cross-section was slightly disappointing. Where I had ordered medium I instead found medium-well to well-done -- just a hint of pink in the middle, and most of the meat was cooked fully. The first bite confirmed my suspicion -- the meat was dry and, worse, seemingly completely unseasoned. The promise of the menu's copy touting the quality of the beef was, frankly, not fulfilled as the meat, though fresh, was bland. The 'unspecified' cheese was unspecified for good reason -- it was basically unnoticeable in this burger, aside from its texture contrast. The one highlight of the burger was the bun, with its fresh sweetness and chewy yet not overly-dense texture.

In the end, though, a burger lives and dies by its meat, and this one was bit of a disappointment. The Acadia Cafe has a lot to offer, but I'd go somewhere else if I was craving a cheeseburger.