Hap's Burgers & Taps — Restaurant in Mercer Island

Update: The management is awesome! We emailed back and forth about the below and other things that I observed. The salt was a change in ingredient types which is being addressed. The employees don't see how much you tip so that's a non-issue. Please keep tipping, they deserve it. I'm really happy to see that they care about the restaurant! The GM was able to address everything that I emailed. I'll be a loyal customer for sure! 5 stars after my next visit as long as the salt issue is fixed!

Original Review: This has been my go-to favorite burger place for the last 3 years, but I’ve been disappointed the last two times (orders were to-go). Normally, the food is fantastic. The burgers were juicy, the fries were crispy, and the shakes were outstanding.

After a Jan visit, the burger and fries were extremely over salted to the point that I tossed them in the trash after a few bites. I thought that it was a one-off, so I waited a month due to being upset about the waste of money and visited again this month (Feb). I had the exact same issue, but it was even worse! I was absolutely disgusted. I couldn’t even get down the first bite of the burger. It was like someone smeared salt across the burger and the fries were coated with salt (no house seasoning). I of course tossed all of it in the trash and went out to eat some place else.

I’m not sure what’s going on. I believe that either an employee is new and hasn’t been trained properly or someone is doing this on purpose. Maybe it's tip based. I do tip but it's not to the level of having a waiter. This is a fast food place not a sit down dining experience. There is no way in the world that anyone would salt their personal food to this level. I hope that someone investigates this before customers slowly start disappearing. The owners aren’t going to understand why customers aren't returning. I’m assuming that most people won’t speak up since it’s a fast-food burger place. I’m writing this to save the restaurant not hurt it. I hope them the best and wish that someone would get to the bottom of it before...

Burger was good they made it rare like asked, dont know if I should've done that after seeing all the cross contamination, saw an employee step on a rag to dry something on the ground the proceed to put the rag on a table with her barehands and didn't wash her hands in back of house, that same employee went to put the nozzles from the soda machine back on it from taking them off from last night, one of the nozzles fell on the ground and she just put it back in the pan that had water in it because they soak them with water instead of food safe sanitizer, then she left it on the counter and had another employee put the nozzles back on the soda machine so I have no idea what she was doing over there in the first place, 3 employees came in after I started eating one of which washed her hands after clocking in on a touch screen that im guessing they touch all day, whilst the other two didn't wash their hands at all, they should always wash hands before clocking in as intentional cross contamination is a federal crime, the lady who did wash her hands used soap and rubbed her hands under the water for 10 seconds before she was finished, even if she didn't put her hands under the water whilst she lathered up it wouldn't have been long enough to kill the harmful bacteria. I have a strong immune system but others might not be so lucky. The fries pictured on their website and in store were not the fries i received, they were as thin as toothpicks and so crunchy I don't think there was any potato left on the inside by the time they were done frying them, I paid 5 dollars for basically nothing as I'm not going to sit there and eat that, so I threw it away it was such a waste. The employees were very kind. Please do better for your sales and...

I really wanted to like this place more, since we live SO close, but unfortunately, we didn’t have a great experience. We placed our order online around 6:20 PM, paid, and were told it would be ready by 7:02 PM. Since it was a Friday night, we expected it to be busy, so we arrived around 7:05 PM. When we got there, they told us they were running late and that it would be another 10 minutes—no big deal. We waited, but 30 minutes later, we still didn’t have our food. By then, it had been an hour since we ordered—just 2 burgers, 2 fries, and a milkshake.

Finally, about 10 minutes later, our friends received their orders, even though we had placed ours first. We asked if maybe they had forgotten about ours, and it turns out they had! They quickly made our food, but my boyfriend had ordered the special piña colada milkshake and was given vanilla instead. Additionally, we all ordered bacon on our burgers, but each burger had maybe half a slice of bacon. The meal cost almost $40, which felt like a lot given the issues.

I think they need to focus more on prioritizing online orders for customers who have already paid. Otherwise, what’s the point of online ordering? The food was tasty, so we might give it another try, but overall, it was a pretty...