Basement Modern Diner

I’m almost unsure how to rate the Basement. On one hand the food is good, the drink selection is decent, and it’s in a great place where you can get just about anywhere with a fifteen minute walk at the most. On the other hand it suffers from the Bricktown price creep that seems to affect everything in the area just by virtue of where it is.
Urban Cowboy ³⁄₅: This is a mighty fine burger. Unfortunately it’s $ 8, doesn’t come with any sides, and a little bit on the smaller side of things. On the other hand, it was a really good burger. I just can’t get behind it because of the size to price ratio so I’m standing firmly beside it.
Fried Pickles ⁵⁄₅: I LOVE FRIED PICKLES! These were very good and they didn’t leave my mouth feeling like the Kalahari Desert after eating a couple of them. You get a pretty generous portion for the price you pay as well. I had no issues sharing an order as a side with someone else.
The Powerhouse Pizza ⁰⁄₅: Holy cow this was TERRIBLE! At one point I said «this taste like it’s from a bowling alley so I guess it’s accurate» as I right this review though I’m going to go ahead and say it was probably the worst pizza I’ve ever ate. Wow. This was just bad. I’d be angry if I’d bought it myself.
So TL;DR burger was good, but the price needs to be a couple bucks lower. Bricktown price creep is bad. The pizza was HORRIBLE. Sides are alright though.

This place is in lower Bricktown, and as far as Bricktown goes, the food is decent, there’s no wait, and it’s minutely cheaper than most other places. That being said, Bricktown isn’t cheap, anyway, when it comes to food.
The Funk Burger (³⁄₅), $ 8: «Sauteed mushrooms and onions, bleu cheese crumbles, Boston lettuce, black pepper aioli, on toasted butter roll.»
This burger was decent enough. A-​OK, one might say. The meat to bread ratio is fairly equal, and that’s always a good thing. I would recommend requesting how you want your burger cooked, since both times I’ve been I wasn’t asked and their go-​to is well-​done. The mushrooms and onions are good, but could have stood to be sauteed for a little longer than they were. All in all, $ 8 for a single burger with no sides is a little steep.
West Coast Burger (⁴⁄₅). $ 8: «Sliced avocado, smoked gouda, crisp bacon, baby spinach and black pepper aioli on toasted wheat butter roll.»
Second verse same as the first. Just switch up the toppings. The gouda was… gouda (sorry, I’ll be over here), along with the bacon.
Fried Dill Pickle Chips (³⁄₅), $ 4: Their fried pickles are done in panko crumbs, which are pretty good with everything fried always. I prefer thicker cut pickles when it comes to having them fried, so these missed the mark with me by just a little. It comes with quite enough to share between two, or even three, people, so it’s a solid enough choice for an appetizer at $ 4.
Natural cut French fries (⁴⁄₅), $ 3: I’d say it’s hard to mess up fries, but we all know that’s untrue. These are good, being cooked well and salted just enough. That last star is reserved for fries that come out nice and hot, and these were just slightly warm. So close, fries.
Baked Mac & Cheese (³⁄₅), $ 5: «Made-​from-​scratch and better than grandma’s. Gouda and American cheeses topped with seasoned panko bread crumbs.»
My grandma never made baked mac and cheese, so I guess they’re not… wrong? It gets a 3/​5, because it tastes like the Kraft bakes for mac and cheese, and I like those. They’re good. But they also don’t belong in any type of restaurant for $ 5.

This is a hip diner/​bowling alley place with plenty of cool factor, but the food was not as good as expected. Maybe the grass fed beef was too lean, but even when I specifically requested a juicy burger, it was dry as a bone. Also, the bread on the burger was not a bun, but more like thick Texas toast. Spiked milk shake was excellent,

Nine bucks is steep for a burger, right? Well, what if the burger is from a local ranch, namely, NoName Ranch (snicker) in Wynnewood OK, and what if the beef is «all natural», specifically, free-​range, grass-​and-​grain-​fed, and dry-​aged? And what if said burger also comes served on a perfectly toasted and locally-​made bun (Prairie Thunder Baking Company), AND is topped with bacon, crunchy, tasty fried pickles and/​or onions? Then that nine dollah burger is suddenly WORTH IT. Choose a burger from the menu or build your own. For my part, when I go back to enjoy a burger on the patio, I’ll probably order another «Urban Cowboy» (the burger, ladies; dream on!). ‘Cause I don’t eat burgers often, but when I do, I prefer they be scrumptious.
I highly recommend people/​canal watching on the patio or ordering from the Basement Modern Diner while bowling, if you want to have fun while dining. On the other hand, if you’d like to have a private conversation with your dining companion (s), the dining room could be the perfect place for you– it’s quiet.

Erin and Shawn Brewer have owned the Red Pin Bowling Lounge for several years, but this is a newly launched concept: a separate restaurant within the bowling lounge with a new menu, new décor and a new name. It definitely feels like a different restaurant from the previous incarnation, which was just a way to serve food to folks coming in to bowl. My parents ventured down to lower Bricktown with me so I could check out the new concept. We shared a lot of different things so we could try more of the menu.
We started with the pulled beef nachos, which were outstanding with black beans and lots of cheese.
Then we moved on to the cobb salad, which my mom and I both thought was delicious. I know that a cobb is not a true leafy green salad, but I there wasn’t as much lettuce as I wanted (especially because the lettuce was this gorgeous, yummy, bright green bibb lettuce and I just wanted more).
We also did a build-​your-​own burger, which we kept pretty plain. They also have a great menu of six different burger creations that looked great. The burgers are really the stand out since they’re using beef from No Name Ranch in Wynnewood, which is locally bred, grass fed and dry aged. This is the same beef used in Irma’s burgers, plus the addition of a homemade roll from local favorite Prairie Thunder. They’re doing all their bread: butter rolls, wheat rolls, french bread and the cake portion of one of the stars of this new menu, homemade Whoppie pies.
We also shared a strawberry milkshake, which was gone in about 43.5 seconds! (That was mostly dad, but after a day of running a bunch of errands with me, I think he was starving!)
An order of fries was almost more than we could do after the nachos and the shake and everything else. They were incredibly tasty and not greasy.
Our server, Nathan did a great job and seemed to have the new menu down pat. We were there at an off time, around 3P on Friday, but the food came out quickly and piping hot.
Sorry I forgot to take pictures! We were so busy visiting (and eating) I forgot to. Oh well, that just means I’ll need to go back. I want to try one of their individual cobblers, and the caesar burger (served on PThunder french roll– nom!) and maybe get a spiked milkshake this time!