Hayes Burger — Restaurant in San Diego

I decided to try Hayes Burger after watching the previous chicken sandwich place close down, to see if the store-front is really cursed as the legends say. I was surprisingly disappointed. For the price, I expected a large Hodads style burger, San Diegans know what I mean, it takes two hands to eat, comes with a pile of fries, and requires a stack of napkins. I ordered the double cheese burger and a large fries, it came to about $30, NOT an exaggeration. If you factor in a tip and taxes it could have easily approached $35-40. That is for a single persons meal. Needless to say, for that price I was expecting a feast. If you spend $35 at any of the surrounding restaurants for one person, you will be eating that food for 2 days. Spend $35 at Rolbertos next door and see what you walk away with, I reiterate my disappointment. The burger was basically In N' Out junior edition. The amount of fries were like someone scooped about a handful and a half of fries. It could not have been more than two cups, literally two cups as in measuring flour, worth of fries. If you are familiar with Rick and Morty, it felt like the "Lil' Bits" diner. I felt pretty much robbed by the time I was done with my meal. As for the quality, it was on par with In and Out, I mean it was quality ingredients and the fries were good. But it was nothing spectacular, it isn't winning any Michelin stars. I mean at the end of the day it's a burger, there is no gold leaf on this thing. Similar to In and Out there are no special seasonings or powerful flavors (not a complaint), it's exactly what you would expect, a simple stripped down American style burger. But for $30 thats an American nightmare, not the American dream. I am just saying, when we are in an inflation crisis, with families living in tents not far from our lovely gentrified enclave, it feels a little gross to pay $35 for a slab of beef, because the guy behind the counter has a waxed moustache, cycles on a fixie, and there is some spray-paint on the wall. Good luck to those who will, but personally I can no longer support this level of excess, pretentiousness and...

Unfortunately I have to rate your establishment, which has great burgers and fries, with a one star. Your online ordering checkout is sneaky, preselecting a 20% tip on takeout order. Your website process goes from Cart to Checkout with a 20% added for tip by default to the total bill. You may respond back to this message and point out that you can change the tip amount, but why even pre-selected on the first place , who expects to have the tip automatically added to the total bill by default? It's sneaky to have it selected automatically, tipping should be optional specially on TAKEOUT, and what you are doing is sneaky and deceiving. You may argue your employees work hard and deserve compensation, perhaps your already high prices can take care of that or pay them well.The rest of us retail workers making minimum wage can't afford an automatic tip your establishment sneakily preselects on TAKEOUT orders. On top of that, you forgot to add ketchup to my bag :/ Your burgers and fries are great, stop...

Was very excited to see what all the hype was about Hayes and to have a new burger joint on Adams Ave.

50min wait for what essentially is an overpriced in-n-out burger. I can almost overlook the wait since I guess it was their first day, but damn near 40 bucks for two burgers and a large fries?

The burgers again are decent, but nothing to write home about. The "large" fries barely filled the basket, I wonder what the small looks like. They were cold to boot as well. I'm just gonna say it, when you know you got guests waiting what I hope is an abnormally long amount of time, being stingy on fries is certainly a choice.

So yeah. Even if the fries were hot, crispy and generous, and even if there was zero wait, at the end of the day the burger is good but not good enough to justify 15 bucks in my opinion. Best of luck to y'all, but it ain't what I'm looking for, not...