My husband and I moved to Chattanooga last summer so that he could open his own business. We are still relatively new to the area and there are lots of restaurants we haven't tried yet. So I have been buying coupons for local restaurants on living social.com. I'm sure you are well aware of the concept as there is some form of groupon or living social deal in every major city. So when I saw one pop up for this Cheeburger, Cheeburger place, I thought what the hell, my husband will probably like it. Then I made the mistake of buying it. Now I knew that a place called Cheeburger, Cheeburger located across the street from the aquarium was going to be a tourist trap but I thought, what the hell, they can't make a bad milkshake, right?
One tired Friday night after work, we bundled up and headed downtown to use our coupon at Cheeburger, Cheeburger. We walk in the place and it smells of bug spray. There was something about the bubble gum pink and sky blue fluorescent lights that decorated the place that were dull and near burning out, combined with the smell that created a dumpy atmosphere. Not what you're looking for in an up beat, fifties style diner.
We sat in a table in the front corner of the restaurant. From there I was able to scan the floor and estimate that the dining room consisted of about 80% teenagers on dates and 19% families (and one percent me and Eric on a date). Naturally, I was horrified for the waitresses. Teenagers are largely bad tippers because they don't have any money, they don't know any better and they don't care. It's difficult to have respect for the hard working waitress when you've never worked a day in your life. The families were probably on vacation, otherwise they might have known of a better restaurant in town. People on vacation are notoriously bad tippers because they are spending money on so many other things that they are spent by the time it comes to leaving a tip. If they weren't on vacation, then they were just the kind of unoriginal, tasteless let's say "rednecks" that would come to a dumpy, overpriced diner like this. Either way, if you're a server, you're getting a shitty tip. Also, people taking their kids to a diner to get some cheeseburgers aren't expecting to spend a lot of money. Well, when fries don't come with your burger and drinks are $2.50, it starts to add up. When someone gets a $50 bill at a place that they were expecting to get a $30 bill at, you can be sure they're not going to spend even more unexpected money on the tip.
The cheeseburgers aren't ridiculously over priced but again, they don't come with any sides. One of the gimmicks at this restaurant is the sauces that they offer to go with your fries or onion rings. Be careful, I said "go with" not "come with." It's another ninety-nine cents for each cheese sauce, horseradish or honey mustard sauce you order. I'm sure lots of people don't notice this on the menu (I didn't but luckily I asked the server), order their sauces and then are pissed off when they get the bill and they spent as much on sauces as they did on the fries. We used ketchup with our onion rings.
As for the food, we each had a cheeseburger and split some onion rings. The food was okay but nothing to get excited about. Forgive my white person snobishness here for a second, but there's another place in town that serves gourmet burgers. Yes, it's very expensive but they use bread from a local bakery (white people love that local stuff) and frankly the bread is delicious. After going from that to this dry, tasteless hamburger bun - well, it was just disappointing.
I also had a root beer float. It was fantastic. Then again, how you could make a bad root beer float, I'm not really sure. My husband had a two dollar and eight-nine cent soda because he sprung for the vanilla syrup in his coke (again with the up charges).
As we were waiting to pay, I was feeling sorry for the server again. The living social deal took $16 off our tab and I can imagine there are lots of people tipping on the post discounted total not the whole amount. Then I witnessed our waitress talking to the table next to us. The guy was asking how big one of the burgers was on the menu, using hand gestures to describe different sizes. It says on the menu half pound and then in parenthesis 10 ounces (which I realize is actually more than half a pound). Nonetheless, with these descriptions the patron could still not get an idea of how large the burger is. Maybe they should put on the menu, "you've heard of a quarter pounder at McDonald's right? Well this is twice that." Still I think the waitress would be stuck trying to hold her hands in the shape of a patty so that these idiots could get a visual. Maybe a drawing done to actual size on the menu would do the trick! God, I don't miss being a server.
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