Grease Monkey Burger Shop — Restaurant in Arlington

They have a little stage and live music on a regular basis, and that is about the extent to which my positivity can go. Nothing really special to differentiate it from any other overpriced trendy burger place you'd find in a typical college town.

TLDR: Overall less than desirable experience, over seasoned chicken strips, mediocre sound system, oddly placed seating, inaccurate menu, but the fries were good.

I went to see a specific musician play a solo show and sat at a table that was awkwardly placed right in front of the stage in a position that was not at all complimentary to the sound system. I was planning to get something to eat while I watched the show but wasn't in the mood for a burger. I will say that they looked very nice in the menu pictures and were priced as I expected, not cheap but substantial in size so probably not too unreasonable. I can't say the same for everything else on the menu. The very limited alternatives were not very easy to get excited about. I opted for the nachos, which were not available because they were out of tortilla chips. So I went with chicken strips and was told that they had to cook more because they were out of the batch prepared earlier. No problem there, I would rather have fresh food. Then the guy tells me the total price and it's higher than I expected, so I point out that the menu on the website I have pulled up on my phone shows $6. (They don't have physical menus, just a fast-food-style board over the counter that doesn't even show all the menu items or prices.) He replied, "Oh yeah, we recently had a price increase, we need to update the menu prices...", then seemed to be confused or maybe lost his train of thought or something, but for whatever reason didn't complete the sentence. Being the nice guy that I am, I help him out with the words he undoubtedly intended to say next, "before they're raised in the system and ordered." He didn't quite get the concept, and I wasn't going to explain the complex intricacies of misleading, mislabeling, transparency and truth in advertising and pricing, as I was fairly certain the cost of the required time would be greater than the monetary expense at stake. So I paid the higher price and took the little pager back to my table to wait for the insanely intense vibrations to startle the core of my soul and ensure there would be no possible mistaking that my chicken strips were ready. They were ready, but I was not ready for seasoning that was so overpowering it could choke a goat and breading that could break the teeth off a bear trap. Since I was leaving soon anyway, the kitchen was closing, and I was hungry enough to eat a chicken strip that was still clucking if it was on my plate, I drowned them in steak sauce until they were soggy enough to ingest and washed them down with Dr Pepper. As bad as the experience was I would still go back if I wanted to see a show or was playing there myself. I would even try a burger since I'm sure it would be better than the culinary disaster I was subjected to on my...

Hanging out at On Tap, with my son & both of us were hungry. Prior to this, I had only been to Grease Monkey once, years ago, and was not impressed. However, places do improve and it's right around the corner....so why not?

After looking over the menu, we both decided on hotdogs. They had lots of add toppings that sounded great, but did make that $4.50 hotdog much more expensive! Also added an order of fries ($3.00) and fried jalapeños ($6.50),which came with a ranch (ish) dip.

His hotdog had fresh jalapeños, pepper jack cheese and green chiles. Mine had pepper jack cheese, green chiles, onions and roasted red chiles. I didn't care for the fact that the onions weren't chopped. Who puts whole slices of onions on a hotdog? Hard to eat like that!

When I got to the restaurant, I found that what was on the hoods ( 3 car hoods that show their menu), hotdogs and the toppings weren't listed. Seemed like there was far less shown overall, than what I saw for online ordering. For example, the online ordering gave multiple choices for what type of bun the hotdogs could be on - the girl at the counter said there were no choices, that the hotdogs only came on 1 type of bun. Cost was $28.88 - more than I expected or thought the overall meal was worth.

So, opened the hotdog take out boxes....less than impressed. The hotdogs were on sandwich buns, which dwarfed the hotdogs. The toppings looked a bit meager. The actual hotdogs did taste great. They were split open and I would have loved it if they had charred the hotdogs just a bit! The bread had a fantastic texture, however it was grilled and I couldn't tell.....and should have been used for sandwiches, not hotdogs!

The fries looked like they had absorbed lots of oil - dark and not crispy. So either not the rights type of potato to use for fries or the oil they were fried in wasn't hot enough. The fried jalapeños looked good, though not a lot of batter on them, or I should say inconsistent battering. They tasted good, but overall, not always much crunch factor to go with the taste.

I found the hotdogs to be a mixed bag of good taste and bad pairing - hotdogs themselves were very flavorful, and the bread was great - just shouldn't be paired together. Far more bread than hotdog. The toppings that we choose actually added little taste, which was so disappointing. You could load up a hotdog, pay a lot and quite possibly end up not being the least bit impressed. As far as condiments for the hotdogs, they only offer regular mustard, ketchup and mayo (if you want it). If they were to offer a variety of mustard types and other condiments, that would be a huge help.

For my taste bang & buck - I would much rather have a spicey Texas Dog from the vendor outside of Home Depot (if they are still there)! I definitely would not order the fries again. Just not worthy. They need to find a better frozen food vendor for those.

Not sure if I will try Grease...

First time coming. Had no idea what we were getting into. Didn't realize there would be this kind of honkytonk vibe. Nothing wrong with it of course, just not my cup of tea. I had hoped maybe there was a different dining area we could've sat in to be away from the music but nope! Even outside you can still hear it. So to my fellow people of color that are not into that type of music and might be uncomfortable in a place where you might see maybe 1, 2 or 3 others of color in the room, this is a heads up for you. I wish i wouldve dug into the reviews to realize more of what to expect ... you've been warned. :) Next thing I was not prepared for and this may have just been us catching them on an off night. The dining area was soooooo hot. We're sitting there waiting on our food and just heating up. You know how some people just can't take being hot and get agitated... yea my brother was agitated by the music genre and no AC, literally took two bites of his food and asked for a to go box and went and sat in the car while me and my mother did our best to sit there and finish our meal while it was still hot and fresh. I am not a sweater by far. It takes a lot for me to sweat even in the gym but the fact that my forehead was damp, I knew okay it's hot in here for real. Maybe their AC was down that night. Hopefully that was all and not the norm. Now on to the food. Eh...nothing spectacular .... I've had worse. So I'd say very mid on the burger restaurants scale. All we knew this night was we wanted a burger place and saw their score was high with over two thousand reviews. Just goes to show everyone's taste buds are different. The menu was a little difficult to read and a bit confusing the way they have it displayed. The problem as far as taste for mom and i was their burger bun. Soft and good flavor, but we felt it was waaayyyy too thick. Literally drowned out the flavor i was expecting to taste from the beef. All i could taste was the bread, veggies and mayo. I THINK it was a potato bun and mom said she thought she may have saw something about different bread options after we had already paid but she figured ok what could go wrong with whatever their standard bun is ...i don't recall seeing different bun options but you may want to enquire. The soda drinks werent good. They need their machines recalibrated so they taste like what they're labeled to be. And the sweet tea tasted old. As you may have guessed we won't be back but you should def come try. Staff was great... and the food and music might be a spectacular experience for the next person ... Oh and if don't recall seeing they do medium well burgers. I don't like that at all...