I have been dining at Hyde Park Bar and Grill for over a decade now. The food, atmosphere, and service has always been stupendous, and it still was last Sunday night for dinner with my wife's family. Having just returned from a trip to Fort Worth and eating a very late lunch, I wasn't particularly hungry, so I was going to get something small to eat. As I was scanning over the menu, all of my favorites seemed to be whispering my name, like kids wanting to be chosen for your kickball team. "Pick me, pick me." I kept telling myself that I wasn't that hungry, but my voice of reason kicked in and reminded me that I could always take the rest home for lunch the next day. So now I had to make a choice on which of my favorites I wanted. I kept going back and forth between the Asian Chicken Salad and the Blacken Yellow tail Tuna Sandwich, when suddenly the craving for a burger hit me. Looking at the menu, I had four choices of burgers, the Texas Raised Kobe beef, ground chuck, ground turkey, sirloin, or the Garden burger. I decided to go light with the turkey burger with the addition of smoked Gouda cheese and a side of their Austin Chronicle's consistently voted "Best French Fries in Austin." ($5.95 + $1.95 to add fries)
The turkey had some flavor, but was a little on the dry side. But after spreading some deli mustard and some the secret fry sauce on it, it was very tasty. So tasty in fact that before I knew it, my plate was clean. There goes saving half of it for lunch tomorrow. My father-in-law had ordered the ground chuck burger with mushrooms added and my brother-in-law had the Garden burger, which both said were delicious. My brother once had the Texas Raised Kobe style beef burger, but said that he could not tell much of a difference from a regular burger... I guess I will just have to try it out for myself in the future. It's hard to compare a turkey burger with a beef burger with bison burger, so you really have to keep them in separate categories. I haven't had many turkey burgers before, but this one wasn't that bad. I will be on the lookout now for other restaurants who serve them to really get a good comparison scale going.
Hyde Park website:
http://hpbng.com/menu
