Stub and Herb's

Stub and Herb's is a sports bar on the East Bank (Stadium Village) part of the U of M campus. Besides a fairly extensive beer list, they also have pretty solid food. Their burgers are 1/3-lb of Angus beef, pattied when ordered, and cooked to medium-well. They offer a wide selection of burgers, from plain burger to ones with salsa, fried egg, bleu cheese, or BBQ sauce and onion rings. On this occasion, I decided on a simple cheeseburger with cheddar cheese. With fries, the cheeseburger basket was a mere $6.

When the burger arrived, I was surprised that there were none of the standard toppings with the burger, such as lettuce, tomato, or onions. Still, the cheese was melted nicely, the bun perfectly toasted, and the burger nicely seared. Cutting it in half revealed a medium-well cooked patty, as promised. The pickle chips, which were erroneously delivered with the burger in spite of my request, were removed with a quickness.

As far as flavor, this is a really good burger. Even though the meat was cooked medium-well, it was still fairly juicy, and seasoned perfectly. But the real star of this burger is the bun: It's a pretzel roll of some sort, sweet, slightly dense, chewy, and delicious. It might lack a little physical robustness, in that it starts to fall apart a little by the end of the burger, but the flavor more than makes up for it. A definite winner.

The only downside to this particular burger is that, for some reason, I found two little hard bits of something in my burger patty -- perhaps little bone fragments? I've had burgers at Stub and Herb's multiple times, and this was the first time I had experienced anything of that sort. I'm going to chalk it up to an outlier for now...

In the end, though, Stub and Herb's is still my go-to cheeseburger when I have a lunch craving at work. Recommended.

Stub and Herb's

227 Oak St. SE

Minneapolis, MN 55455

Get Directions

(612) 379-0555

Tony's Diner

This is a terrible cheeseburger. I'm a little embarrassed that I've actually had them multiple times.

Tony's Diner is at the corner of 4th St. SE and 15th Ave SE in Dinkytown, near the University of Minnesota's East Bank campus. They used to be called The Steakknife and would occasionally have live music at night, but I think that's gone by the wayside with the name change.

Bottom line: avoid this cheeseburger at all costs. Sure, it only costs $5.95 for a ~1/3lb cheeseburger with a side of fries, but that doesn't make up for the acrid, bitter, charred exterior and dry interior. The cheese is a forlorn-looking slice of american cheese food, and the burger comes served with tomato, onion, pickle slices (shudder) and a few small scraps of lettuce rather than a large piece that covers the entire burger. Seriously, who does that? And serving it with the pickle slices on top of all the other fixings just contaminates the rest of the vegetation with vile pickle juice. If I remember correctly, the bun wasn't very good either, but the last time I went was a few weeks ago, and after multiple bad burgers I decided I was never going back -- not even to take pictures or get more up-to-date impressions for the blog.

You can get a better-tasting burger at a fast-food joint. DO NOT WANT.

Until next post...happy cheeseburgers.