Apollo Burgers

Swung by at 8:30, sign says they close at 9. Lights were just shutting off. I was really looking forward to eating here dangit!

Good food. But a bit too pricey for fast food burgers and fries. It’s better to eat at Red Robin. You get more for your money. And better quality food.

I have chosen this particular location to review as I am most familiar with it, though the others do not vary too much from this. It is also the newest of the bunch and consequently the cleanest inside, so this chain has the benefit of this place putting its best food forward in that regard. The place at 5400 S. by Jiffy Lube does a lot better job with the actual meal, though.
This is part of series of local restaurants (Crown being the other main one — review for that also by me here) that like to put lunch meat on their burgers. One of the major issues I have with this is that it’s typically what I call «dirty» pastrami, meaning laden with gross chunks of fat, frequently more than the actual meat at times. This renders the entire thing unpalatable to me. Further, I can do without the Thousand Island dressing on the burger. I have no idea who started that idiotic trend (Hardee’s, way back before they started having Karl Malone peddle fried chicken for them, also tried that trick), but usually I have to order a bacon cheeseburger and modify it so that their tasty mayo instead of that dreadful sauce is on it and tell them to hold the onions.
One of the things I dislike about this place is that they also tend to undercook the burgers. While I’m pleased they seem relatively fresh, I’m less pleased to find wholescale pink after a couple bites. Everything on the menu, minus the baklava, is grease laden. So, while I like the fried zucchini and fried mushrooms, those things by themselves are damn near a meal. I’ve never been able to finish the ample fries that come with the sandwich, either, if I order it that way. Their salads are very well-​done, their burritos much less so, including the pastrami burrito, which included oddly some sort of weird barbecue beef stuff. If you order it, skip that part. If you order the chili verde burrito, be aware that it will be very fatty. Their BLTs and Patty Melts are also decent, with some slight modifications. They also have the lamb on one of those skewer spinners, if you’re into that.
A recent major dilemma for me is their price hike, where they are now probably more than double what I would spent at McDonald’s for lunch and the corresponding quality is certainly not double that of McDonald’s. I think this was a huge mistake for them, especially given that you almost certainly will wind up waiting for your food, you may wind up fighting for parking and those other variations I mentioned above. I won’t say I would never go there again, but it will be a lot less often now.

The burgers and fries are good, but the people are maybe the least friendly burger slingers around, and the prices went up substantially recently. It’s moved from semi-​regular to only-if-I’m-in-the-area-and-about-to-pass-out-from-hunger on my list of quickie drive through lunch spots.

This place is a regular for me and I can’t believe I have not reviewed it yet. The Gyros and Burgers are really good. There is one menu item that is a must try. The goldenburger and onion rings. The burger is your run of the mill pastrami burger with a twist. It has garlic toast instead of a bun. What a difference this makes! Wow, now iv’e done it. On my way to get one right now. Need to stop and get something to clean the drool of the keyboard first. This thing is tasty!