As you can see, these babies are little greaseballs.  No, that’s not the glare from lights above, it’s shiny griddle grease.  The fries are all fresh cut and Flames only uses Niman Ranch beef (antibiotic free).  The mini burgers came with bbq sauce, bacon, cheddar cheese, an onion ring, and lettuce, tomato and onion.

Now back to the french fries.  As I said before, these are fresh cut.  When I worked in a restaurant back in PA, I learned that you don’t change out the oil in the fryer very often – and that is what gives the fried treats their yummy flavor.  I think Flames changes their oil too much, because the fries (although crispy and chock full of potato) are kind of flavorless.  They taste like potato, but there isn’t anything buttery flavor and the assumed fry-like feeling wasn’t there.  They’re kind of like the fries at In-n-Out… how they taste so fresh cut or something?  Maybe that is my problem… maybe I only like crap fries and haven’t acquired a taste for fresh fries… but I’ve had fresh cut fries before at other places (T-Rex, for example) that were really good, so I think it all goes back to the oil.  Also, the potatoes that they use are small, so almost every french fry has one side that’s full of skin, and I’m not really into that.

…A cross-section of the burger.  It was good, greasy and had just the right amount of bbq sauce and bacon on it.  I usually don’t eat full on hamburgers because they leave you feeling like a big load afterwards, but I was really hungry on this day.

Flames
88 2nd St
(between Jessie St & Mission St)
San Francisco, CA 94105
(415) 896-5084

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The turkey burger came with a chipotle mayo and the sweet potato fries are to die for. If nothing else, I would come to Zebulon just to stuff my little fryhole with those sweet potato fries… they are SO GOOD!!

The burger was AMAZING. It was juicy, HUGE and really messy. I think this was the best turkey burger I’ve ever had. And those sweet potato fries were sweet, salty and lightly crunchy on the outside and really soft on the inside.

15 minutes later….

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My lunch time dining experience though was just OK. When I first walked in I was pretty excited because I really like the old tavern/bar look and it seemed like a pretty cool place but my experience wasn’t so spectacular. Maybe it all started with the cloudy, sour iced tea or maybe our server’s sour attitude… but I was thrown on the wrong foot within the first 5 minutes.

My friend insisted that the calamari at this place was awesome so we ordered it as the app. If you like simple, fried calamari, the basket at this place is really good. The calamari is mostly rings and not so many tentacles, the rings are tender and easy to bite/chew and not as rubbery and dense as they are at other places.

For lunch I ordered a cheeseburger and fries. It looked great when it came out – the bun was nicely toasted and the fries were golden brown. When I was cutting it in half I noticed that there was only 1 slice of cheese (cheddar) and that it was the oily, cheap kind that didn’t cover the entire burger and that most of it had melted into the bun, so there was hardly any cheese left on the burger, waaah. So I slopped it with ketchup to mask the no-cheese flavor. It was pretty well done too = greasy from the cheese but dry inside.

My friend ordered the half rack of bbq ribs for lunch. They definitely looked better than they tasted. We were pretty sure that whoever was cooking them left them in the smoker for too long because they were dry and felt like biting into a piece of cardboard. It was nice and saucy though, but even good sauce can’t make hard dry meat good enough to wanna tear apart.

All in all, the experience was mediocre. I felt like I wanted to stay and hang around and have a beer because the place looked really cool, but honestly, I was really put off by our server’s “the world owe’s me something/i’m too cool for you” attitude and non-friendly service, so it made me want to get the freak out of there. Just because you work at a bar restaurant doesn’t mean you have to be so UGH. If I make it back someday, I hope I have a better time, because people deserve to have a good time at such a laid back place.

PS. I’m especially sensitive to these kinds of restaurants because I, myself, used to work at a bar restaurant as both a server and a bartender, so I understand the pangs of customer service and working in the restaurant industry.

Ben & Nick’s
5612 College Ave
(between Keith Ave & Ocean View Dr)
Oakland, CA 94618
(510) 923-0327

Viewer Rating: [ratings]

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