Red Robin (Burnaby) Birthday Burger

Back to Red Robin for yet another free Birthday Burger! Easy peasy this time -- our waitress said any burger would qualify. She even steered us away from the Tavern Burgers because they were "cheap".
For a change, instead of plain bottomless fries I went with the garlic fries upgrade. My friend who came out with me got a Madlove Burger on her own dime.

The Southern Charm Burger ($16.99) brown sugar glaze, candied bacon, Whiskey River BBQ Sauce, cheddar, caramelized onions, shredded romaine and mayo on a toasted brioche bun

Bun was good. Soft, slightly sweet. It compresses very easily, but there's no so much bread to get in the way of tasting the actual burger. The light toasting also added a little something to the overall flavour.
Had to review my pictures to find the caramelized onion. Oh look! There's a small ring. Needless to say the flavour didn't come through at all.
Candied bacon not very sweet and not very bacon salty either.
As burgers go, this felt kind of boring. Basically it's a burger slathered with admittedly pretty tasty BBQ sauce.
As premium burgers go, it also seemed kind of small / not very tall.
Tasty, sure. Special? No. Certainly not special enough for basically $17 but if you can't find anything more interesting on the menu, it's still safe to go with tasty.

Garlic Fries upgrade (+$2.29)

I was initially worried this would just be fries powdered with garlic powder. Turns out it's actually butter-fried garlic. Lightly fried so as not to be browned.
This might actually have been a worthwhile upgrade except they didn't seem to have tossed the fries in the garlic butter at all. All the garlic and butter sat on the bottom of the plate, which made it really hard to access with the fries. So it was basically still fries. And if you worked at it you scooped up a bit of the garlic and butter onto your fry.
Total waste of time (and money).

Pleasant friendly service as usual, nothing different except all the staff were wearing facemasks because of the Covid scare.

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Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

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