Rick’s Tavern on Main has historically been a divey, somewhat gross college bar. And let’s be honest, on a typical Friday or Saturday night it still is. But after a long bike ride, I found myself at Rick’s for lunch with astronomically low expectations. Don’t get me wrong here, I love me some dive bar food and I’ll take it over a snooty restaurant any day, but I literally knew nothing of Rick’s aside from its ability to cure sobriety.
So, imagine my surprise when I found Rick’s had a fairly large menu with a good diversity of choices. Of course, my eyes immediately found the burgers, which also had a nice range. Plus, just about every one of them came on a pretzel bun. Awesome.
I went with their Western burger, which was topped with cheddar, crispy onions (aka onion rings), bacon and a bourbon BBQ sauce. Nothing too creative here, but sometimes you don’t need to mess with a classic. I also ordered it medium rare and chose fries over salad for my side because uh well I don’t need to explain.
The burger that came out looked pretty good despite the menacingly large bun. Yet, if a bun is going to be too big for a burger, at least it was a pretzel bun. When I dug in, I was pleasantly surprised with the flavors that greeted me. The burger itself could have been more on the rare side, but generally it all tasted pretty good. Not the most creative, but certainly acceptable.
My burger at Rick’s won’t go into any top burger lists, but Rick’s played it safe, added a pretzel bun and churned out something that I have no complaints about.
