doodledee.com

adrian's tavern

[address]

216 1/2 First Avenue SW Rochester, MN 55902

[phone]

(507) 289-0577

[date of visit]

6/11/2005

[price]

[summary]

Looking for a so-so Jucy Lucy and some decent appetizers in Rochester? Newt's is the place.

[the joint]

Newt's is a Rochester landmark that dates to back to 1980. It occupies the upstairs portion of one of those old downtown buildings on 1st Avenue. (Right next to maybe the last adult bookstore left downtown.) To get in you can either walk in through The City Cafe - the restaurant downstairs owned by the same people - or you can walk through the outdoor seating area in the 'alley' and climb the fire escape-esque stairway on the outside of the building. I went through the alley hoping we could score an outdoor table, but unfortunately they were only for the downstairs joint. Boo.

Inside, Newt's consists of a long, narrow bar area in the back that transitions into a larger dining room towards the front of the building. I didn't notice any video games or pool or anything, but I guess I may have missed them.

And then there's the fact that Newt's is proud of their burgers. I say this because every square inch of the place is plastered with signage declaring that you are surrounded by THE BEST BURGERS IN THE UNIVERSE. And just in case you're not comfortable taking their word for it, Newt's also likes to [repeatedly] point out that the citizens of Rochester have voted Newt's the best burger in town for 2 consecutive years. (I'm not sure what happened for the first 23 years they were open, maybe their burgers sucked back then.) Even my mother - who probably hasn't been to Newt's in 20 years - insisted that I was going to be eating a "great, great burger". That's what we in the business like to call an effective marketing campaign.

[the food]

Full of hype and anticipation, we walked in, grabbed our seats and ordered our beers. No pitchers at Newt's (?!) and domestic taps are $3.50. Thumbs down on no pitchers, but I guess $3.50 for a pint isn't horrible, all things considered. The waitress also shuttled over some of the grossest, saltiest, worthless garbage popcorn we've ever tasted. Instant carpet tongue. Yuck. I went back when I saw a new batch in the machine, but it was just as salty. Must be in the oil or something.

After putting down a couple beers, we hit the menu. Go figure, it's mostly burgers. But there's other stuff, too. On the appetizer side, they've got the standards: wings, cheese bread, chicken strips, mozzy sticks, and 5 different types of a nachos (five types? wtf?). Everything was expensive. We started with an order of their 'hand-dipped mozzarella sticks' ($7), some wings ($8!), and some garlic cheese bread ($7). Conclusions: best mozzy sticks in the universe, nice garlic-y cheese bread, and the lamest wings we'd ever been served. You think the 10-cent wings at Sally's are small? These were like Cornish game hen wings or something. But lord did the mozzy sticks make up for it. Who cares if they were $1/ea, those things ruled.

More beers. More stalling. And then we put in our order. Jucys all around, we say. "What would you like on them?" our server says. "What are our options?" we ask. "Anything you want" she says. So a bunch of us order onions, a few order lettuce/tomato, and KC [naturally] asks for a fried egg, bacon, and some extra cheese. Those are the toppings Newt's normally puts on a burger called Todd's Burger, but KC thought the outside box and requested a Jucy Todd. That's one small step for Keith and one giant step for heart disease.

Other Jucy Notes: the baskets were $6.95, which included fries and a pickle. Burgers are all hand pattied and served on a fancy Kaiser bun that is grilled with butter. As far as I know, there was no choice of cheese. Lastly, the default preparation is medium, which was a bit of a surprise. The waitress even offered medium rare (and maybe even rare?) which was definitely a first for the Jucy boys.

Jucys arrive. First impressions are mixed. The burgers are small in diameter but are nice and tall. There are some reports of cheese leakage. The buns are comically huge for the burgers, resulting in a very poor burger-to-bun (B2B) ratio, but do appear to be fresh baked and of good quality. Fries are standard crappy thick cut fries. Pickle: spear.

And then we dug in. Meat taste was a nice, natural beef flavor. Consistency was fair. All Jucys had melted (but not molten) cheese inside. The seam was sealed nicely and we experienced no blowouts. The fries were officially deemed 'adequate', with no notable plusses or minuses.

After munching away for a while, a couple of common themes are detected. First, Newt's apparently shakes some sort of season salt on their burgers during the cooking process. Pretty much everyone commented on it and a couple of tasters even declared it overpowering. Our recommendation would be to request no additional season salt when you order. The other theme was the 'fear the cheese' factor. Maybe it was the medium-or-under cooking option, but a Newt's Lucy is a long way from some of the liquid magma burgers we've had at other places. Several in our group just ate as though it were a regular burger. That type of cavalier attitude should not go unpunished, but unfortunately at Newt's, it does.

[service]

Service started out pushy and aggressive, and turned grumpy - dare I say bitchy? - by the end of the night. After observing the rest of the staff, however, we concluded it was just our particular server. Sucks to be us, I guess.

[conclusion]

On the plus side, the massive topping selection was a real treat and the appetizers were maybe the best we've had. On the minus side, the burgers were over seasoned and the fries were nothing special. So that leaves us with the question: Is the Jucy Lucy at Newt's the best we've ever had? Not by a long shot. Is it the best we've had in Rochester? Absolutely.