Johnny Rockets — Restaurant in Atlantic City

My friends and I came here for dinner on the second night of our visit. I frequented one of these establishments a lot in my childhood, so we were excited to revisit the burgers we grew up with! The overall experience was okay, with some room for improvement. I think the experience was limited because they were short staffed, but I will get into that later. We ordered our food and were clear about the order. We wanted bacon cheese fries for the table as an appetizer along with drinks, and we wanted our burgers with a side of fries served after that as main courses. This was broken down so that the order of our meal made sense, however this was completely botched. We were served our side of fries, and bacon cheese fries before we got our drinks. I do not want to see my plain side of fries unless it is served next to my burger. I did not want to PAY for a separate side of fries either, but that is beside the point. Since I was, I expected it to come out in the order we requested. We were thinking what is going on here because we did not even receive our drinks yet? I sat in front of these hot fries for over ten minutes as they cooled down before I had to flag down the server to get us our drinks we already ordered. Our server was running around left and right as if he was working out, so out of respect I am going to leave his name out of this because it is not fully his fault. You may be thinking why did you not ask for the drinks when the fries came? This is because a different worker served us our fries and we felt weird asking him for the drinks. As a customer, I am not eating french fries without my drink and I want to see my appetizer FIRST, before my main courses. This brings me to my next con, just throw the fries in there with a burger meal. I understand this is a vacation spot and things will be a little more expensive, but their serving of fries is not that big and the restaurant would not lose a ton of money adding this to a meal deal; might even bring in more customers. I would understand if this place served a mountain of fries like 5 guys, but this was a normal puddle size. The portion was not BAD, but it screams “include me with the burger this cost is very little”. I did enjoy the burger even though it was cooked a little above my liking, that said it did the job. We ordered them medium, but figured at a place like this they all come out the same way. This place also gives free soda refills which we greatly appreciated. Given the amount of time we waited for our drinks, this plus came in clutch. We enjoyed our food, but the experience was a little bit weird because of the delays and missteps. Not sure if I would come back as the boardwalk is filled with a ton of spots, but not a bad choice if you are craving burgers. One suggestion is to not have just one server do too much. It was clear this guy was all over the place and as I said before, not entirely his fault. This might be a better takeout experience, but if you are around and want to sit down for a burger you may need to wait...

I went to this Johnny Rockets (the first JR’s I’d ever been to) because I love hamburgers and figured I’d give it a try being hungry and in the mood for a burger.

I went on a Wednesday night, about 8pm. When I entered, I waited a bit to see if anyone would seat me but no one approached me. After a few minutes, I seated myself. The table, was dirty.

I just sat there because I wanted to see what would happen since I had worked in many restaurants in my younger years. I also like to see how any business handles themselves.

There was only one person eating at the counter, and one table of 5, and one of 4, who had already been served. Other than those parties and me, the place was empty.

After about ten minutes, I waived over to some employees who were chatting amongst themselves at the counter. A heavy set waiter, very young guy, seemed to have a limp, comes over. Really nice, sweet kid. Very easy-going. He asked if I was staying, or getting something to go and I said staying. I asked him if he could clean the table and he did it right away.

I got the double cheeseburger. Jayden, the waiters name, suggested getting it on sourdough bread I think it was, since, I didn’t want the usual hamburger bun. And that’s all I ordered. I wasn’t expecting much since it was only about $10.95 and we’re on the boardwalk in A.C., where everything is crazily overpriced.

My double cheeseburger came out within ten minutes and looking at it, I was very pleasantly surprised.

First off, who ever makes the burgers here knows what they’re doing. They were very frugal with the toppings to the burger which is how it’s supposed to be. They didn’t use slices of onions, they used ‘strands’ of onion. Three on each side to be exact. I noticed that right away. A very thin slice of cheese melted into the burger. Very light on the special sauce. Two small very thin slices of tomatoes. I was also very surprised by the size of the burgers -big. I bit into one the sides, (they cut the burger in half) and viola, a very, very interesting, and very tasty and very thick burger! I would go so far as to say it was great. Almost like a burger that you would make for yourself at home. It also tasted a bit like a very tasty meatloaf. And the toppings being so small, made the burger stand out that much more and lent just the right amount of extra flavor. Really, really good.

I’m a real burger aficionado and I’m from Brooklyn, NY. Most food away from NYC to native New Yorkers is never as good as what we get in the city. But I must in all honesty say that I would put the Johnny Rocket double cheeseburger in my top ten of all time best hamburgers. And it completely filled me up, that’s all I ate there that night. Totally hit the spot.

If you’re in A.C., or any other place with a JR’s, it is definitely worth eating there. For myself, they definitely have a new...

The set up is really cute, it gives retro vibes. The only good thing out of everything we ordered was the milkshake. Most of our food was either missing ingredients or had ingredients which we specifically asked to not have. The guy who “greeted” us, more like looked at us and laughed in our faces, was pretty rude. I asked why he laughed because we got there about 45 mins - 1 hour before they were going to close so I asked if we came too late and if that’s the case we’re more than happy to come back the next day with no issues! He gave us an annoyed look and just kind of kept staring at us while walking away… Our server, Abbey, was 10 times worse than the guy who greeted us. No smile, no hi, no introduction, 100% attitude as if us being there was an inconvenience. No exaggeration, having such a trashy waitress truly kills your appetite. But what I find so funny is that when she came by with the check she was all smiles and drew a little smiley face on the receipt. I am big on tipping, I feel like it’s truly necessary especially in this economy and tipping just shows appreciation for the service provided. But what makes you think you’re getting anything more than the 18% minimum when your service was AWFUL? A smiley face on the check isn’t going to cut it! We had a few requests such as no bacon or no mushrooms due to religion and allergies, but our food was still served with these ingredients and when we brought it to her attention, all she had to say was “oh” and just took the plate with sooo much sass that I told her to leave the messed up food and just add another order onto our bill for the same thing but to please make sure that it’s made correctly the second time around. The food was also very disappointing compared to how well known Johnny Rockets is! It was our first time coming here, but we picked this place because of how much our friends rave about a location that was in central Jersey. After us, a few more people came in and ALL of them were greeted by the guy kindly, weird! And for 1 other table, Abbey was their server and it seemed like they were unhappy with their service as well based on what I heard. Sad to say, we will never be...