Kuma's Corner

We ate dinner at Kuma's Corner after hearing about it for a while. We saw it on Diner's, Drive ins and Dives, and it has also been featured on Check Please.

They mainly serve burgers (but there are other items on the menu).  The burgers are 10 oz - so quite large, and they are served on pretzel buns.  These burgers were almost too large - in the sense that Natalie couldn't even fit a full cross section bite into her mouth.

We ordered 2 different hamburgers and tried each of them. All of the burgers are named after heavy metal bands to go along with the theme of the whole restaurant - it is very dark inside and they play metal music.

The burgers we ordered:

Absu - Tomatillo Salsa, Pepperjack, Red Onion Avocado Relish, Queso Fresco, Trio of Breaded Deep Fried Chiles.  This was a little spicier than Natalie would have wanted.  The toppings seemed to not be placed very evenly because sometimes you couldn't really taste some of the items - especially the case for Nick, he didn't even get to taste the cheese.

Mega Deth with chips

Mega Deth - Chorizo and Red Potato Hash, Pico de Gallo, Cayenne Avocado Cream, Tortilla Strips.  The combination sounded great - but it was a little mild after eating the Absu.  We would have preferred cheese on it

The menu did have a lot of very unique burger combinations.  Maybe we chose poorly but we really didn't think they were super special. If we compare this experience to our experiences eating at Hot Dougs or Frank N Dawgs (gourmet and specialty hot dogs and sausages), we didn't enjoy the food as much. 

Absu burger with fries

Kuma's has a lot of rules

- i.e. no reservations. no substitutions of ingredients, so you have to follow how they do things.  This is fine with us but might be a problem for others

We had heard that because they don't take reservations and they have a smaller dining area that some people can wait up to 2 hours on busier nights.  Therefore we went on a Wednesday night and succeeded in having a much shorter wait - about 15 minutes.

Maybe there was just way too much hype about this place but there is no way we would want to wait 2 hours to eat here.

Another thing to mention is that the kitchen is very small so it takes a few minutes longer than normal to get the food out to each table.

Final Thoughts on Kuma's Corner:
Food - good but not great.  It could have just been our expectations or because we have some awesome burgers within a 10 minute drive of us at Palmer Palace and Back Alley burger (with little to no wait and not as many rules)
Service - pretty standard, we already knew what we wanted to order because we had looked at the menu while we were waiting to be seated, so that sped things up a bit
Atmosphere - very unique, you could tell pretty easily who were the regulars versus the newbies (all of the newbies, including us, had cameras out taking pictures of everything). It was loud inside so not a place to take grandma.