Date Night - Week 4: Red Robin (Yum!)

Jeremy and I took advantage of an afternoon off recently to make the trip out to Raccoon Creek State Park. The park has miles and miles of great hiking trails, a beautiful wildflower reserve and lakes for summertime fun. However, our goal for the trip was a) to find the waterfall and b) see if it was frozen and c) climb it.

Jeremy’s favorite activity in Alaska is ice climbing, and it’s one thing he misses a lot here in PA. (Example:  Ice axes and ice climbing boots are always in the back of his car, apparently “just in case” he stumbles across 50 feet of glacial ice next to South Hills Village. You never know.)

So, I loaded on the layers and he loaded on the backpack full of climbing gear and we hiked out with my dog into the middle of the park, found the waterfall and played around for a good few hours. (He did most of the playing; I was content to be two feet on the ground on belay and let him hang upside down like a monkey.)

Something I never thought I’d hear from a boyfriend: “Come on, honey, THROW the damn ax. Harder! Like you mean it!”

Needless to say, when we returned to the apartment to ditch the dog and a few layers of clothing, we were really hungry and really, really disinterested in pulling ourselves together for anything resembling a fancy meal. 

When I suggested Red Robin, the “gourmet burger” joint – the most recent tenant of the ever-changing space adjoining the food court at South Hills Village, he was psyched, but immediately asked what I would eat. (Burger places generally don’t treat us vegetarians well.) However, Red Robin will replace any traditional burger with a BOCA® burger or Gardenburger®, so the menu is my playground (yum!). 

The atmosphere at Red Robin, if you’ve yet to visit, is similar to a TGIFridays – the walls are decked out with televisions and miscellaneous framed pop art and the kitchen is half-open to the restaurant, separated by a half-wall. There are a few arcade games in the entryway, and a bar off to the left with several tables separated from the rest of the dining room. There was a ten minute wait for the main dining room but we could be seated at the bar immediately, which served us just fine. (It also separated us from the four students that I immediately recognized lounging on the waiting area benches – seat us now, please!)

The burger choices – the specialty – were plentiful.  I went with the Bonzai Burger (veggie, please) and the combination of pineapple, teriyaki, cheddar, lettuce, tomato and mayo totally drowned out the bland, cardboardiness of my veggie patty. Jeremy’s Whiskey River burger (and all of its Cheddar cheese, onion straws, lettuce, tomato, and mayo) was gone in minutes, so enough said there. All burgers come with “endless fries” but between the two of us (I had a few left, which he ate) our two orders were enough. 

A number of other burger options will please any taste buds.  For example, the Sauteed ‘Shroom, with garlic Parmesean butter and melted Swiss, or the Burnin’ Love Burger, with fried jalapenos, salsa, Pepper-Jack Cheese, and cayenne-seasoned burger on a jalapeno-cornmeal Kaiser roll.

Burgers not your fav?  Surprisingly, Red Robin’s menu has a lot more to offer:  a selection of specialty salads, (Cesear, Asian Chicken, Apple Harvest Chicken) soups, (French onion, chili, clam chowder, and chicken tortilla) and wraps (Ceasar and BBQ chicken).  They offer a few entrees as well, including pastas, shrimp, and chicken fingers, and combinations of appetizers that could make meals of themselves.

Get a milkshake.  They’re made in silver mixing glasses and poured into glassware, but most servers bring you the extra, so it’s like a milkshake and a half. And if you’re thinking your options are just vanilla and chocolate, think again. Choose from Mint Brownie, Oreo and Hershey’s chocolate, or a variety of flavors of shakes, malts, or smoothies.

As expected for a night as busy as this, the service was sporadic and slow – we waited a while for more ketchup and for drink refills. It’s also not the place for intimate conversation – the television at the bar was on and the customers in the bar area ended up competing with and each other to be heard by their dinner companions. Jeremy and I exchanged cell phones and played games until our orders arrived, took a couple pictures of the Red Robin mascot greeting young diners by putting their heads in his mouth, scarfed down our burgers (yum!) and called it a night.