Beyond Delicious Crown Burgers- SLC

SLC has quite a few good burgers around, but when I think quintessential SLC Burger it's Crown Burgers that always comes to mind. Prepare yourself for mouthwatering meat on meat madness. Take a regular Utah style cheeseburger -think burger, cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion and thousand island dressing in a bun and add a 2x-the-burger size hand-full of tender pastrami. Now you have a Crown Burger! Approaching a Crown Burger is delectable in itself- you can smell it before you can see it! That's not to say the burger isn't pretty. I included so many photos because you can definitely taste it with your eyes. Eating this mound of a burger is a gastronomical experience. The hamburger balances the strong pastrami taste, the thousand island adds a bit of tang. At least for me the bun usually gets pretty mangled cupped around so much meat but it's a small price to pay for so much savory goodness! Eaten with their steak cut fries this is a lunch that can't go wrong. DO ask for fry sauce. Theirs is the relish included style and strikes me as a little less sweet and a little more sour on the fry sauce spectrum. Have you ever accidentally tried to order fry sauce not in Utah? Be prepared for odd looks and loads of ketchup. It's too bad fry sauce isn't available EVERYWHERE. At least I think it should be..

Besides their Crown Burger (and Jr Crown Burger for those who can't get through a whole regular one) this joint has some awesome not typical burger spot fare. If you want something more Greek try a gyro or a souvlaki stick! They also have some pretty awesome sandwiches like patty melts and french dips. Order a classic shake or baklava if you have any room left in your stuffed tummy.

The only thing I always wish I could have with my burger is an ice cold beer. That's
why I tend to do takeout/drive-thru when I can't stop myself from a pastrami fix. Unfortunately this means I miss out on the awesome decor. They must be the only fast food restaurant with a chandelier and fireplace!

Crown Burgers is family owned, even with all the different area locations. This is what they say about that on their website:

"In all of the Crown Burger locations you will always find 1 to 5 family members working along side of our employees. Some of the restaurants may differ with 1-2 different items or different prices, but you will always find the Best, freshest food and friendliest service in all of our Crown Burger locations."

No wonder they have consistently awesome food.

The deserted stale coffee shop: Rovico's Coffee House-Draper

I'm on the job hunt and I've discovered a jolt of espresso and the white noise of a coffee shop is exactly what I need to bang out 20 job applications in a few hours. I guess I've been spoiled in CA with good independent coffee shops in walking distance from everywhere I ever lived. I've been really disappointed that my options here seem to be Starbucks or Beans and Brew (a Utah franchise that does at least roast it's own coffee..but I'm trying to stay local local.)I was stoked to find Rovico's Coffee is considerably closer than the drive I've been making to Sunset Coffee (to be reviewed soon!). Saturday I took the chance and lugged my laptop and note books over to 123rd.

First impressions were good. They have free wifi (no time limit). The place looked clean enough. It seems odd that there is a huge rack of flip flop/ casual sandals for sale by the cash register but I'm going with it... Of course I have some standby drinks I like to order, but I wanted experience 'Rovico's Flavor' so I ordered from their signature menu. This is a good time to note despite their menu listing lots of pastries and coffee shop eats the only thing available when I got there at 1:45 on a Saturday was one biscotti in a glass jar. I'm glad I wasn't counting on any food! After looking over the menu I finally choose the "nuts about you" signature latte. It has hazelnut, praline and chocolate syrups. I take it hot because it was kinda cold and windy outside. I have to admit I was annoyed by their starbucks style sizes (tall, venti etc) but their biggest drink size Vasto made me laugh. I looked up the definition and apparently it means vast in Italian (go figure). Hahaha. For some reason "Can I have a vast size coffee please?" just seems so wrong to me.

I get my coffee and hunt around for a chair near an outlet. This is a big coffee house test. There were only 2 outlets reasonably near seats that I could find without looking like a weirdo pacing the perimeter of the room. The big upholstered chairs aren't situated for laptop/writing use with their uber low coffee table so I went with the extra tall table with tall chairs. So this is the beginning of the mehness. The chairs are made of metal and it's really difficult to push them far enough in that you can set you laptop down and comfortably type and comfortably sit at the same time. I get off my chair more than once to pick it up and scoot it in closer to the table because this is impossible to do while sitting in it. I swear it weighs a million pounds and the table has legs that just won't get out of the way!! All the trouble was a mistake because actually leaning back in the metal bar chair is just really not that comfortable. I gave the place another look over to see if something else might be better and was frustrated to see my only other option besides the upholstered chairs were tables that had backless stools. No good for typing for hours on end. This place seriously gets an F for seating. It's almost more mean to entice your patrons to stay on your torture chairs for free wifi than to just not have any chairs or wifi at all. Then I would have had the sense to stick with the drive through like the only other patrons I saw all afternoon. I was there for 4 hours on a Saturday and only one couple came in to pick up drinks!!! To be fair there were newspapers strewn about the tables, so theoretically someone was there earlier in the day...or at least at some point? Luckily the teenage employee didn't seem to mind I was there..even if we could hear every move each other made including her personal phone calls about, "OMG! OMG! New Facebook photos! OMG!" So much for white noise :(

Now onto the coffee. To their credit the 'nuts about you' wasn't too sweet which is my common complaint about coffee shop specialty drinks. It had a good nutty flavor with a creamy chocolaty base. It was rather wet for a latte (there was 0 foam left when I opened it) but hey I didn't order a cappuccino so why complain. The bad was the weird off flavor I got with every sip. I finally came to the word 'dust' to explain the weird aftertaste of this cup o'joe. I'm pretty sure they were either using stale coffee beans or their espresso machine is in serious need of a cleaning. Have you ever had a cup of coffee from a carafe that's been sitting on the hot plate all day and all night? That's the taste I'm talking about.

Check out their seriously not updated/error ridden website or if your favorite coffee flavor is OLD please take my seat-I don't plan on coming back. Just want to get some free wifi? Prearrange a back massage for recovery, order a tea, and bring your own sandwich.