Hollywood Burger Company
408 Broadway Ave E (Capitol Hill), 860-6826. Sun-Thurs 11 am-10 pm; Fri-Sat 11 am-11 pm.
Weekends are too much pressure. Tuesday nights, to my mind, are the best nights to go out. People Who Eat Out are big fans of Tuesday nights: the meat and produce are fresh, the chef had Monday off, the regulars–true aficionados, the repeat clientele the restaurant relies on–pour in.
That’s the theory, anyway; I hit Broadway on a Tuesday night, and it was dismal. Cafe Septieme: half full. Julia’s: one-quarter full. Broadway Grill: three tables that I could see (but you can’t get a good look into the back room). The new pan-Asian place where Angel’s Thai Cuisine used to be: two lonely-looking couples. I think everyone was over at Dick’s. That’s what it looked like, anyway. That’s what Dick’s almost always looks like. But instead of going to Dick’s, which all of my hormones were screaming for, I went to Hollywood Burger Company.
I do not think of myself as a purist, but I don’t think you should put a pineapple on a burger. I don’t think that if you are going to anoint a burger with barbecue sauce, you should glop a mayonnaise-based special sauce on top of that. Why not? It’s just my instinct that there are some things a burger shouldn’t have to suffer: It’s one of God’s plain foods, happy enough with a little cheese, a little ketchup, a few good pickle slices.
But that only works when the burgers are good, and Hollywood’s are not. They’re dry, charred little hockey pucks, overwhelmed by doughy buns and condiments, by tough, pale tomatoes and flapping flags of lettuce. The Duke (barbecue sauce and onions, $4.49), the Zowie Maui (Canadian bacon, pineapple, and Swiss cheese, $4.99), the King’s Peanut Butter Cheeser (illlcccchhh… $4.49)–maybe all the add-ons are meant as a distraction.
On the plus side, the milkshakes are very good; I had a double fudge ($2.89) gutbuster that made me very happy before it made me very sick.
Hollywood makes the same mistake that Kidd Valley does: overlaying the burger experience with a sterile, lifeless kitsch experience. In this case, it’s la-la land trivia, light fixtures made of old film reels, burgers that arrive atop piles of popcorn. I know that a burger franchise is a slow-moving target, not worth the time it takes to complain–but really. Really. You can do better at Dick’s for a sawbuck, plus you get to see a lot of wildlife pass by.