Burger Quest 11th Outing

The holidays are behind us and our time off from Questing was filled with good friends, good food and good ale....well make that wine and beer, ahhh, and maybe a few spirits too!

But now we have regrouped and have our next "Quest" in the bag....so to speak.

It was my turn this time and I decided to contact my favorite steak house, La Rueda, which only serves burgers after 7:30 PM, to see if they would be willing to make an exception.
Contact was made with the manager, Francisco Sosa, and he obliged my request.  It was extremely nice of him to do that for the "Burgerteers"!

According to our waiter, Jorge, part of the reason for the "special" dispensation was that we arrived before the lunch business got into high gear and there was plenty of room on the grill.  When the lunch business is 'getting it on' the grill is filled with steaks and the steaks take priority over burgers.  Makes total sense to me. 

Now before I go further let me be very clear that this is a steak restaurant!  They serve mostly meat!  There is no chicken, no fish, no pasta!  They do have a few pizzas and they do have great salads!  They do not have individual salads!  The salads they serve will feed four people providing you are not eating just salad.  
They also have empanadas which my wife has with salad when we go there as she is a pescatarian.

We entered and were greeted by the hostess.  

We asked to speak to Francisco.  He greeted us and thanked us for coming and said he was pleased to oblige our request.

Maybe it's because I have been there before but when you enter you know you are in a steak restaurant!  The straight forwardness of the interior and the decor emphatically says "MEAT"!  I think you can tell that by the pictures.

We were then taken to a table.

So we receive our menus and our drink order was taken. 
*Please see the menus at the end of the post.



The drinks arrive and we place our order for the first burger....the naked burger.  Medium rare as always and we order the Kobe.  Our waiter Jorge spoke English which helped with taking our special burger request but he did come back once to check just to be sure.  I'm pretty sure the grilling maestro questioned his order.
It is obvious that there is basically no one that goes in to any of the establishments that we have gone to so far and orders just a burger and the bun.  It is totally alien to do that.

The burger arrives and it looks good.  Nothing on it and cut into three pieces as requested.

Upon opening it up we see that it is heavily weighted to the rare side.  I'm drooling and Reg and Barry are going with it but would like it cooked a bit more.

Now this way of cooking seems to be the norm from what we have seen so far.  Most places cook a medium rare request on the rare side so it would make sense if you don't like them like that to order medium on your first visit to see where they take you.

The meat to toasted bun ratio was very good and the burger's diameter was larger than the bun.  

You could see that it was preformed but the way it came apart suggested that they make up the burgers and then form them themselves.  We all thought this but we could be wrong.

Tender, very juicy and even though it was cooked a little light for two of us the opinions were this burger is in the top two!  The flavor was outstanding.

We then ordered our burgers, again Kobe, the way we liked them and they arrived as requested.  Ordering this one medium got Reg and Barry their medium rare burger and I stuck with the medium rare.  Grrrrr!

As we are finishing Francisco appears and inquires as to our experience and we responded accordingly.  I just hope he'll let us do this again when we go back to our top three and do the taste off!  We'll see!

I have also included their wine list which in my opinion is quite nice.  It is obvious that it is a steak restaurant as the list is super heavily weighted with vino tintos.  Which, again in my opinion, you can't go wrong with either the Fuzion Santa Rita Tempranillo/Malbec or the Las Moras Black Label Bonarda....both are Argentinian wines.

Until our swords cross yet again we are at your service!
One for all and all for one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

https://www.facebook.com/pages/La-Rueda/169246916447008