Ace Burger

While we were dining at Cardero's (which was on my birthday), we decided that Milhouse deserved a birthday meal of his own.  Due to our hockey schedule, the only time where Gordo, Lionel Hutz and myself could do this was on a night of an 11:00pm game.  Great, the only options afterwards would be Denny's (*shiver*) and Knight & Day (*double shiver*).  So it is no secret that Milhouse loves burgers, so a late-night burger joint was probably our best bet (thus, no Asian food).  Open until 3:30am, Ace Burger was just the place that we were looking for.  Formerly Sunset Burgers, gone are the "Kobe" burgers and in with bigger patties, yet slightly higher prices.

We decided to share a bunch of sides to go with our burgers starting with the Fries, which were fresh-cut and fried beautifully.  They were lightly crisp with a pleasant starchiness that is consistent with Kennebec potatoes.  After trying out the plain fries as a baseline of sorts, we proceeded to have the Poutine with a good amount of cheese curds and beef gravy. There was a good combination of melted curds and non-melted ones.  These were decent curds as they exhibited a slight squeak (not a huge one though).  The beef gravy was thick, rich and a touch salty.  We felt it went well with the fries and cheese curds.  An above-average poutine in my books.  Our last side was the Tempura Battered Onion Rings with tzatziki.  These large suckers were crunchy and not overly greasy, but the onion inside was slightly firm.  Hence, when we bit into them, the batter slid off and we were left with a barely cooked piece of onion.  Despite being labeled as "tempura-battered", there appeared to be panko bread crumbs mixed in which provided a nice texture and crunch.

Seeing how we were celebrating Milhouse's birthday, we encouraged him to get the biggest and baddest burger on the menu.  This turned out to be the Royal Ace consisting of two beef patties, cheddar cheese, bacon & ketchup.  We added a fried egg to it for good measure and to test his tolerance to more cholesterol.  As you can tell, this burger was too big for anyone to actually put their mouth around.  Even after attempts to squish it down to a manageable size, it turned out to be a fork and knifer.  And if you can imagine, the darn thing was cheesy, greasy and probably took a few years off Milhouse's life.  He enjoyed it though, remarking how moist the patties were.  For myself, I went for something different in the Lamb Burger consisting of a "Lam" patty (I thought only Chinese menus had spelling mistakes... or was this a Chinese lamb?), Feta cheese, "tatziki" sauce (2 errors in the same description!), cucumber & lamb sauce.  I found the patty to be moist and plenty lamby.  The addition of feta and tzatziki made for a Greek-tasting burger.

Both Lionel Hutz and Gordo had the Original Ace Burger with cheese.  And according to both, their patties were moist as well while cooked all the way through - a good sign of consistency.  Loved the copious amount of melted cheese too.  One thing I would've liked to see was a more creative bun.  It seemed a bit generic.  So as you can ascertain, our meal was not bad.  I would probably hit up some other burger joints before Ace, but if it were a late night or an early morning, Ace would be a decent option.

The Good:
- Decently-sized burger patties
- For us, they were cooked properly
- Open late

The Bad:
- A little pricey
- Onion rings could be cooked a bit longer or not sliced as thick