P.J. Clarke’s

For a while, Chris and I were checking out all the major cheeseburger joints in the city. We visited JG Melon and had a mind blowing experience (even with the two hour wait – review coming soon) and wanted to see how the other famous burger joints stacked up. We visited P.J. Clarke’s to sample their cheeseburger and other goodies; the wait wasn’t too long – only about 30 minutes for a table around 3PM on Saturday (which is nothing compared to some of the waits we’ve endured for a burger). We definitely wanted a cheeseburger, but P.J. Clarke’s also has a large menu of seafood items, so we decided to order a cheeseburger and an order of mussels. Our cheeseburger:

It looks like a standard cheeseburger (maybe even a cheeseburger you’d grill at home), but P.J. Clarke’s has a special combination of meat that makes the cheeseburger both juicy and flavorful. The onion sits between the bottom bun and the meat and you have to request other toppings (we asked for a side of tomatoes and lettuce). If I ranked my favorite burger places in the city, P.J. Clarke’s would probably be in my top 10, but nowhere near the top 5; the burger wasn’t juicy enough and it was a bit small for me.

Initially, we ordered mussels with white wine, but later found out that they sold out of mussels for the day (SHUCKS!). Since we were still hungry, we decided to order macaroni and cheese:

P.J. Clarke’s interpretation of macaroni and cheese was more of a Fettuccine Alfredo; they used shells, a cream sauce, bacon, and peas in their recipe and it didn’t resemble your typical mac and cheese. I definitely think it’s mislabeled and wasn’t a fan of the dish; the alfredo was too watery/runny and the shells weren’t cooked properly.

Based on our waitresses recommendation, we ordered hash browns instead of your typical French fries:

The hash browns were good, but didn’t match the rest of the dishes we were eating (it was too much of a breakfast food).

I’m not sure I’d visit P.J. Clarke’s for their burgers again, but I’m interested in trying their seafood offerings since they have mussels with white wine that sound like they’d be pretty good. Hopefully the next time I’m in the area, P.J. Clarke’s will actually have mussels in stock!