U NO MAS!

BBQ Burger with Bacon and Cheddar, a photo by jaceman4 on Flickr.

I don't know if people will get that title, I thought it was witty, but in retrospect it may just be contrived, and now I don't feel like putting in the effort of trying to think of a new one. So, I know, when people hear that I went to Uno's for a burger they'll be wondering why I ordered a burger at a pizza joint. I had some good luck with Jake's and I knew that Uno's does more than just pizza. Unfortunately, as it is with chains that have been around for so long, the quality tends to deteriorate. While they tried to spruce things up with those new booklet menus like Cheesecake Factory, the essential product delivered was still the same; that is to say, not as good as it could've or should've been.

The burger as you can surmise, was a burger, with bacon and cheese and BBQ sauce. So let's go back to the basics, the meat was okay, but for a place this pricey, the portions were undeniably stingy. The patty was okay, nothing fancy, a little on the greasy/watery side, which either means frozen or poor quality (too high fat content, 15-20% depending on means of cooking is ideal) meat or both. The bacon was bacon, and the cheese was cheese, they neither added to nor detracted from the burger. The lettuce, onion, and tomato were not exceptionally better than something you might find at Applebee's or even a nicer fast-food chain like Five Guys or In-N-Out. The sauce was well, overly sweet, and kind of runny, though I couldn't tell if that was the sauce or the burger. Supposedly it was supposed to be their signature "Wowza" sauce made with Sam Adams lager, but frankly, I really didn't taste a whole lot that differentiated it from something slightly fancier than Kraft BBQ sauce from the supermarket. Maybe I just don't know my BBQ sauce. Overall, it didn't mix well with the burger, but rather overpowered a lot of the other flavors. It really was an immemorable blur.

The fries were... well, what you'd expect from a high school cafeteria; bulk purchase, frozen, and deep fried. It's pretty hard to get these wrong, I'd have been sad if they did. At the very least, because some people have a hard time understanding what my dad says in English, I got a free BBQ chicken pizza out of it. It wasn't that good either, but it was free. Uno's? Well, I wouldn't go there for their burgers, though nowadays, I'm not sure I'd go there for anything else either.