Hamburger Hamlet

We call it Hamburger Burn-let, but that's probably overblown. I'm giving this a solid three stars, somewhat predicated on nostalgia, and somewhat based on experience.

My first contact with a Burnlet was back in Georgetown, Halloween night, sometime between midnight and 6am. I was young, impressionable and drunk. My head was swirling with a dangerous cocktail of drugs, and my entourage was a circus of hallucinations, wavering mutants, and friends cloaked in radiant costumes of prismatic light. It was therefore no surprise that I found the talking hamburgers and bubbling faces in Burnlet to be tasty and a bit too euphoric.

We call it Burnlet because HH has an unsurpassed capacity to attract exceptionally aloof miscreants as their waitrons, and even snottier hostesses that would make Paris Hilton look like a gracious and attentive candystriper by comparison. The immediate thought that springs through everyone's mind is "This is Hamburger Hamlet, the assimilated equivalent of Chili's and Red Robin. Why the attitude?"

Despite their abject lack of talent for hiring skilled restaurant workers, the food isn't half bad. Really. I know people diss their food or completely dismiss it because it is a chain restaurant, but its filling and not a bad combination of hamburgers.

First and foremost, their lobster bisque is actually some of the best I've had outside of a restaurant with the word "Chez" in it. It is thick, actually tastes like lobster, creamy and semi sweet. I can even detect a splash of cognac, but I'm sure this is a chemical that duplicates the flavor of cognac.

The burgers are a decent range of choices. Sauteed mushrooms and swiss, bleu cheese, cheddar and bacon. Ok, sure, they aren't exotic or terribly fucked up, but that's sometimes what I want in a burger. If I want to go crazy and flip out on toppings, I'll go to Fuddrucker's where I can exercise as little restraint as Mark Foley with boys, or Bob Packwood with girls