I Hope They Don’t Serve Burgers in Hell

or, How Stacked Burgers Stacked Up

When my co-worker said it was “Burger time,” I mistakenly thought we were going to a place called Burger Time. Or at least that, wherever it was we were going, burgers were the primary element of concern. I had tasty daydreams of Square One Burgers, or Hamburger Mary’s, or even 5 Guys.

How wrong I was.

As soon as we drove past Stacked Burgers, and I saw the oh-so-clever signage, I knew I was in trouble.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Winghouse. I’ll eat at Hooters (though the wings are far superior at Winghouse). It’s not these types of establishments that I oppose, it’s the third-rate execution of establishments like this that I oppose. If you’re going to be a cheeky, girlie-centered restaurant, I say go for it! But please, don’t subject me to a half-assed job of it.

1st sign of trouble: Your hostess is Legion. Seriously, this girl smiled and something straight out of Devil’s Advocate went on with her face.

I couldn’t help it; I cringed. Visibly. And I’m pretty sure she saw. Which, I think, means this hostess will one day appear in the middle of a dark road when I’m driving alone and will cause me to swerve, lose control, and hit a tree.

Legion pointed us to a table. She didn’t lead us to a table. She pointed at the table with one smoking fingernail.

While waiting for whatever underworld dreg would eventually rise up to take our orders, I risked a look around. They had phrases written above the bar. They said a lot of things, but not one expressed my current opinion of Stacked:

Abandon all hope ye who eat here.

2nd sign of trouble: Everyone thinks they’re clever, but…. I’m sure someone, at sometime, told the owner of Stacked Burgers that he was clever. That he was a funny guy. (I’m betting it was one of his hostess minions.) The truth is, he is not a funny guy. He’s a lame guy trying to be funny. It’s like when you’re dad makes a really bad joke, then lifts up his corn on the cob and says, “Hey, are you trying to say I’m…corny?!”

Those phrases above the bar? Here are just a few:

• We love’em Stacked!

Similar to Winghouse’s “We Serve’em Naked,” so I can’t chop this one up too badly.

• Welcome to the MEET market!

This is a bad joke gone…badder. Welcome to the Meat Market would have been offensive, but clever. It’s a meat market because of the (ahem) pretty girls, but it’s also a meat market because the primary ingredient is meat. (Or so one would think.) Why change it to Meet? Does anyone actually meet up at this kind of establishment? If so, I’m willing to bet the morning-after crotch-burn is worse than the morning-after heartburn.

• UDDERLY delicious!

I wish the emphasis was mine. It’s not. They not only used “udder” to make a breast pun, but they SHOUTED it. Epic fail.

Who are these phrases for, anyway? What guy do you know whom, upon entering a venue touting beer, burgers, and boobs, looks up to READ?

Maybe it’s for the daughters who come here with their daddies. (I wish I was kidding, but as we walked in a man with two young daughters walked out. When his girls change their names to Desire and XTC and pursue careers at Mons and 2001, he’ll have no one to blame but himself.)

The menu was also trying to live way beyond its humor capabilities, but we’ll come back to the menu later.

3rd sign of trouble: No one is better looking than Legion. If you’re too young, or too old, to work at Hooters, and too ugly to be a stripper (which, let’s be honest…,) then you’re perfect for Stacked!

The prettiest girl there was the busboy…busgirl. Actually, it was hard to tell if she was a femme man or a butch female, but at least her face was symmetrical, petite-featured, and all her teeth were in.

And, not to be picky, but if the name of your restaurant is a double-D entendre, please try to get the girls to wear push-up bras. Or water bras. Or any bra. They call'em fun bags, not sag bags.

I assumed something other than that oh-so-clever sign and the 2.5 stars on Yelp must be luring guys in, so I checked their website. The website features pretty girls. None of the girls on the website work at Stacked Burgers. At least not during lunch hours.

Our waitress had a name none of could remember, but it started with a D, so I called her Daddy Issues, because clearly something led her to this particular career path. Maybe it was a daddy-daughter trip to Hooters when she was young.

Daddy Issues gave us our menus and took our drink orders. She returned with Styrofoam cups. Nothing against her, but this immediately raised my hackles. Either You, the Business Owner, don’t care at all about the environment or you don’t think you do enough business for it to make an impact. Either way, You, the Business Owner, are an idiot .

Then, she did the unthinkable. She grabbed each drink by its rim and handed it over. I am not a waitress. I have never been a waitress. But I know this is wrong, because it is clearly illustrated in this nifty diagram it took me five seconds to find online and which, I have to assume, is part of Waitress School.

And don’t defend her by saying she gave us straws. It is never okay to put your fingers anywhere near where liquid I’ll be drinking is going to make contact.

Daddy Issues took our orders: Three Stacked Burgers, one Spank Me Burger, and one French Maid Dip Burger. Then she disappeared, allowing me the opportunity to dissect the menu uninterrupted. Let’s begin!

Funny Food Names that are Foul. Wang Dang & Danglers sound like dongs. And let me just take a wild guess what guys absolutely do NOT want to eat, or think about eating. That’s right, Wang Dangs, Danglers, and anything else reminiscent of dongs.

Of the other “funny” menu names, two were just insulting: Sloppy Joanne (which sounds like the date you definitely don’t want) and the Spank Me Burger. At first, this sounds like a playful title for a spicy burger, but then you read the description:

(AKA Black and Blue Burger) For those who like their Stack abused…

Did my menu just make a domestic violence joke? Really? Buzzkill. I noticed they serve hot dogs, but refrain from calling them Bobbit Dogs. So apparently it’s only funny when women are abused. Good to know.

And one name was gross: Chicken Chest Sandwich. Again, why change the obvious “breast” to “chest?” It somehow makes it sound less tasty and less feminine!

Furthermore, why, at a place with burger in the very name, are there only seven burgers? And of those, two are made of non-hamburger meat, and one is a double burger so big it’s impossible to eat?

Beer choices. Piss, or piss with lime? Not that I was drinking during lunch, but if I had been, I would’ve been disappointed. We have two fantastic breweries locally—Cigar City Brewery and Dunedin Brewery, why not use them? Why not support local business, like your own, and offer better beer to your customers? Bud Light Lime, really? Who drinks this?

Green people, I guess.

The back of the menu had the “story” of Stacked Burgers. The story should have been, “We’re three guys with too much money who opened up a place where we could drink piss-beer, eat passable food, and ogle mediocre tits.”

Instead, the story is that they “want to be a cool place.” A place with cold beer and hot burgers, served by “someone who would always be happy to see them and to listen to their stories.”

There’s a word for girls who are always happy to see you and to listen to your stories. The word is, Strippers.

And when you say you “want” to be a cool place, you’re really only highlighting what you are, in fact, not.

This was about the point that my Correcting Pen of Doom came out of my purse. I should say in advance that I do not copyedit menus mercilessly everywhere I go. I even try not to correct my friends’ grammar. I’m not a grammar Nazi. And I won’t go over every misplaced comma and inconsistencies in treatment of lists, names, and descriptions.

That said, “compliment” and “complement” are different words, with different meanings. Your bar will never “compliment” your menu. It may complement it, but that is also up for debate.

4th, and last, sign of trouble: Maybe the food is good?While I was copyediting the menu, our food showed up. The Spank Me Burger had next to no Cajun spice, and all of our burgers ranged from well-done to medium-rare, but I don’t know that any of us asked for our burger to be cooked to any special temperature. I certainly wouldn’t have asked for well-done on the outside, but medium-cold in the middle.

As we were leaving, my final observation was that if I’d wanted to see boobs while I ate red meat, I could have gotten a burger from Wendy’s, gone into the bathroom, taken my shirt off, and eaten lunch. It would have been less hard on my wallet and my soul.

If they serve burgers in Hell, I hope to God they’re not Stacked.