doodledee.com

murray's

[address]

26 South 6th St Minneapolis

[phone]

(612) 339-0909

[date of visit]

12/29/2003

[price]

[summary]

Far and away the classiest of the joints we've been to, but somewhat of a letdown in the food deptartment. Except the garlic toast, of course.

[the joint]

What can you say about Murray's? It's been a Minneapolis institution for like 500 years. The history is palpable the minute you walk in the door and gaze into the not-just-retro-looking-but-actually-old bar. The place has pink tablecloths on the tables, chandeliers on the ceiling, and a special booth where Sid Hartman eats like 4 times a week. It's a gem from a cultural perspective - a throwback to a different era that was full of gangsters and flappers and, apparently, huge steaks.

[the food]

Ah yes, the food. Murray's is famous for its steaks. Featured among them is a massive slab they refer to as the Silver Butter Knife that, you guessed it, is so tender you can cut it with a butter knife. It's also big enough to serve two, which I assume makes it well suited for a couple looking to engage in a romantic evening of meat-sharing. Have fun with that, then.

More to the point, the Grossman recently was notified that Murray's is featuring a Jucy Lucy on their lunch menu. The presses were stopped and emails were sent and a post-Christmas visit was arranged.

Eight of us made the trip, and seven partook in the jucy. While we pretended to look at the rest of the menu, we ordered some cokes and enjoyed Murray's customary garlic toast, a treat so thin and so crispy and so incredibly soaked in butter and garlic that it's long since been inducted into the appetizer hall of fame. Yum-o. Our baskets also included some ballpark style jumbo pretzels, which were okay, but not good enough to justify displacing valuable garlic toast real estate. Whatever.

The $9.95 jucys were only available with American cheese and were only offered with fries. I asked the dude about getting some onions and he told me that all burgers would be served with condiments. I giggled.

When the food arrived, we saw that 'condiments' translated to some green leaf lettuce, a couple of raw red onion rings, some red and yellow (!) tomato slices, and a worthless flabby pickle spear. The accompanying fries were of the frozen variety and were hot to warm depending on which plate was surveyed. The burgers appeared dark and charry, but not so much in a burned way as in a steakhouse burger kind of way. They were served open face on a huge, nicely grilled bun. Some members of the panel commented that the burger itself was larger than average, but others disagreed, saying the enormous toasted bun created an optical illusion whereby the meat portion just appeared to be larger when in fact it was somewhat smaller than the competition. From now on we're bringing a scale.

As for the taste, the meat was top notch - lean and almost gamy in flavor. Most jucys were cooked medium, which was considerably more rare than other stops on the tour, but was agreed to be more than acceptable at Murray's, where rumor has it they grind their own beef daily.

As advertised, all burgers contained hot, melted cheese, but none suffered the whimsical overstuffing that can make backdoor blowouts part of the fun and challenge of enjoying a Lucy. Jman did get squirted by his, but all we chalked that up to user error as he did not employ proper depressurizing techniques before the first bite.

[service]

Service, while friendly, was startlingly bad for a place of Murray's caliber, especially when it's half full on a Monday lunch hour. Drinks took far too long to come out and only half the table received complimentary refills. On the plus side, there were maybe 50 busboys who were more than happy to refill our water glasses after every sip and clear our plates as soon as we finished chewing. Oh wait, that's not good, that's annoying.

[conclusion]

All in all, Murray's was somewhat of a letdown. While the quality of the beef was clearly well above most other joints in town, the complete package couldn't deliver enough to justify the higher prices and limited lunch-only availability. A fun place to try once, but not something we'd recommend frequenting over other lucy options.