Burger Bob's Drive-In — Restaurant in Baker City

"Mixed feelings, like mixed drinks, are a confusion to the soul" -- George Carman

111th person to review Burger Bobs, or Happy Burger, or Arctic Circle in Old Baker City, Oregon (I'll get to why that is). Baker City is named after the only Senator killed in Combat and has less than 10k people! It's located in Northern Oregon two hours from Boise. This is my 439th review. It has the biggest, most crazy dollar store I've ever seen! I digress...

As the quote above suggests, and then my description of Burger "Bob's" many names, I found myself scratching my head wondering what their "original" name is. In the front lobby (no dining in) they have newspaper articles about the family-owned business and advertisements for "Happy Burger" and newspaper articles for Arctic Circle opening in Baker city at the same location, yet it's called Burger Bobs-- not to be confused with Bob's Burgers (the reason I bookmarked lol), so I don't know what their "real" family-owned and operated name is. Nevertheless...

The place was busy with cars backed up waiting for 20 minutes, which has to mean this place is really good or the locals are loyal or don't have anywhere else to go! They had many call=in orders. The locals were flying in and out. Hell, they have a 1/2 gallon ice cream challenge! The menu looked like an old diner, overly caloric and full of yummy goodness. I went with a chicken strip basket sub onion rings-- skip it. Nothing special. In fact the chicken awkward tasting, the onion rings felt like they were in oil that's been there since they opened and I threw them out at the rest area. It's all in the experience, right-- that's my motto!

The staff was friendly albeit it slow and somewhat "new" acting. Understandable. The cook sat down on his phone often, while the food was cooking or the fries were in the fryer as opposed to cleaning or providing excellent customer service-- MULTITask people!

All in all-- if you're local, I suppose this is the place to be-- but in my world, it doesn't cut it. Time is precious and the food, nor the service was...

We ordered one order of fries, a chicken sandwich, a regular burger, and an order of 4 chicken nuggets. We waited for our food for 45 minutes, just sitting there in our car. There was one time, about 15 minutes in, a lady handed us a small bag out of the window but as soon as my husband opened it to make sure it was right, she said, "Oh, that's not yours," and took it back to give to someone else after his hand had already been in the bag. When our order finally came, there was no apology, not even an acknowledgement that it shouldn't take 45 whole minutes to make fast food. At least it was very hot when we got it. The fries were bland and the fry sauce was very ketchup heavy with no other flavor infused in it. I guess the chicken nuggets and sandwich were what you'd expect--according to the ones who tried them. The burger was so dry and overdone and unseasoned with anything but salt. And the bun was not cooked all the way. It was heavy and semi-raw in the middle like it needed another 5-10 minutes in the oven. I took three small bites and couldn't eat it anymore. Maybe they make them there and they are usually good? I hope this was a fluke, because the people of Baker City deserve better. There were three workers there when we were there and we were the fourth car in the lot, so we didn't expect such a wait. There was a boy of about 20 years old who was making all of the food and then two older women running around like chickens with their heads cut off, not doing anything but frantically fretting. I will not give this place a second chance if ever we find ourselves needing food in Baker...

This is basically the only burger joint in town. They have a whole lot of different offerings. There were three or four different types of fried potato options, several different hamburger options, shakes and such, several drink options, and lots of other tasty fried treats. However, it's worth it to note that when you order a sandwich, i.e. the pastrami sandwich on a hamburger bun-tyoe bread -- it might have actually been a hamburger bun but I really wasn't paying attention -- you're basically getting a cold cut sandwich with a little bit of warm meat on it. This wasn't what I was expecting, but it wasn't bad. The favorite thing I ordered were the steak strips, which are basically like nearly bite-size chicken fried steak. I had it with barbecue sauce -- which by the way there are a lot of sauce options as well -- and I really enjoyed that. At my mother-in-law with me and her favorite thing that she got was this sweet cream cheese-filled fried pretzel which I got to agree with her was...