Bobby’s Burger Palace

Today was my 3^rd and last time I will be entering this building. Were they busy? No. Were they short staffed? No. Were they standing around, on their cell phones, talking loudly, swearing, using the N word over and over again, making fun of customers (one with special needs) and one who was middle eastern, who was referred to as a «Sand N*gger» by a female employee.
I asked to speak with the manager. The girl who was «working“in the dining room said «what do you want her for», I said «I would like to speak with a manager».
The girl goes back and to tell the manager again and comes back 17 minutes (yes 17) and says «my manager wants to know what you want, she has too much bullshit to do right now».
I said «I will wait for her to speak with me». I sat there another 45 minutes and the manager Cathrine came out. Looking like she hasn’t showered in a month. She gave me so much attitude and told me if I didn’t like it then I could «go fucking eat at Five Guys.
I just got up and walked out. I was shocked at the lack of professionalism. This was the manager, and I was told she was the General Manager which makes it that much worse. They need an entire do-​over with their staff.
The food is great, the location and ambience is wonderful, but this staff is out of control. No one in the building acted like they even cared. If they actually had a kind, caring team, this place would be 5 stars, instead I am giving it 1, and that is only because I HAD to pick a star.
PLEASE fix the staff issues. Make some changes. Get it done.
Annalisa M
Newton, MA

I have to say in my previous trips to BBP, I would have given it 4 stars. However, my how things have changed ! Changes need to be made in this restaurant, and fast! Its Saturday night, about 7pm. It wasn’t slammed, but the line was slow because they have one person taking orders. But that turned out to be a good thing because they were clearing (notice I didnt say CLEANING) the table so slowly, that we would have to have stood there waiting for seat anyway. We chose to seats to sit down, but we had to wipe round table off because because the woman who cleared the last customer, never bother to come back actually wipe down the counter. That happened the whole length of our table. My friend ordered an iced tea and that took 20 minutes to get to us. Watching the kitchen, the pickup window was covered with orders of french fries and onion rings, but very few burgers we’re coming up with them, they just SAT there and sat there. Adding to the apathetic tablebusser, the two working as wait staffed seemed confused, wandering around as if they were free range chickens in slow motion. The atmosphere/​vibe coming from the entire staff was one of, «Who gives a siht?» After waiting over half hour our food arrives. Guess what !? French fries and onion rings are cold! My friend ordered a burger medium rare, it was well done. I ordered a salad with a burger on top, the burger was half the size of my friends and it wasn’t uniform in size looking more like it was a hand-​made patty and it was smaller than a hockey puck and it too way over cooked. It was lukewarm. which is more than I could say for the bacon and the French fries which were both cold. No dressing on my salad either. My friend and I looked at each other as if to say what the hell is going on, because it was like we were in a totally different restaurant than before. The guy sitting next to us ask for a fork and he was told they were out of forks so they gave him a plastic one?! Seriously, how does a restaurant run out of forks? Now again, if they were slammed I would cut them a little slack but they weren’t and now I know why they weren’t slammed on a Saturday night at dinner time. I have recommended this place to dozens of people since it opened, however, after last night experience I won’t mention it again. To anyone. Management needs to step it up and fix this problem fast if they want to stay in business because they are not the only burger joint in town.

This place is slow, understaffed and overall has horrible service. Not sure how they even stay in business.

Came here on a Saturday night… it took 1 hour from the time we ordered to getting the burgers. Ridiculous.

Delicious. One of the best burgers I’ve had. Great food for the price. The staff were all extremely friendly and nice. I had the Dallas burger with sweet potato fries and regular fries and a milkshake. All if it was delicious!

When hitting a restaurant named after a celebrity chef, one thing I always worry about is whether I am paying for the branding, or the food. Never having heard of Bobby Flay, I walked in just knowing that Bobby’s Burger Palace was the place for me. The big bold letters on its sign cried out to me from across the parking lot, «Enter! all ye who seek to dine on beef, and buns in our palatial halls!»
My first impression of the menu was positive, because there were several variations on burgers themed by different area of the country: LA, and Dallas come to mind. I ordered the Dallas burger, mistakenly calling it the Texas burger at the register (it is not like there is a Houston. How many other Texan cities are on the menu?). Then I noticed that the register is also actively selling cook books by Bobby Flay, and I knew. Bobby was not an unrelated little kid like Wendy Thomas; he is a celebrity chef who wants to capitalize on the value of his name.
The dining room was mostly full, but there are a few communal tables for single diners like my self. I sat at one across from another couple as they just finished their meal, and left. That was great for them, because they got to eat, enjoy their meal together, and leave their refuse for the staff to clean like a traditional restaurant. That was not so great for me, because I got to stare at it for fifteen minutes while the wait staff ignored it. If you are going to merge dine in restaurants with fast food, combine the best parts of them, not the worst.
My burger took a while to arrive, and ultimately was underwhelming. For $ 8.60, tax included, the patty felt small. It was positively smothered in cheddar cheese, but the cheese felt bland/​mild despite its quantity. The menu promised me slaw, and sauce. They were certainly present on the burger, but not in any appreciable quantity. The best way to describe it is that the burger is visibly very neat, but not very flavorful.
I can say the same of the french fries, which came without ketchup. I am unsure of whether it lives at a condiment station some where on the premises, I had to pay extra for it, or what. This is another of those confusing fusions of dine in, and fast food where I had no idea what to expect.
The staff was much more prompt about clearing my plate after I ate, which was nice. They may have just been behind on kitchen orders, which happens to the best of us. Either way, there is enough missing from the BBP experience that I will not be back. I hope that his books sell well, because his burgers were disappointing.

I can’t tell you how many throwdowns I’ve seen Bobby Flay participate in. WIthout sounding like Bobby Flay’s biggest groupie, I’ll just say I have an enormous amount of respect for him. But, after tonight’s burger, I don’t view him as a God anymore, he’s a mere mortal like the rest of us.
The first thing that really annoyed me was the fact that my burger came a few minutes before the fries. Normally, I wouldn’t complain, but it’d be nice for everything to arrive all at once. I’m like a T-​rex, and when its 5 o’clock meat will just start disappearing. If its halfway decent meat, it’ll disappear. That’s exactly what it was. A medium well done burger that was medium well done, but still felt lifeless. It wasn’t juicy, didn’t really taste fresh, and wasn’t really something worth serving to the greatest carnivore of all time.
Maybe I’m being a bit harsh. The jalapeño sauce was tangy and spicy, something that combined well with the New Mexico burger that I ordered. That could be extended to the chipotle ketchup as well. But the biggest disappointment was the sorry ass bun. Gordon Ramsay would call it a «Kitchen Nightmare.» If you want to stick with Food Network, then I guess we better get Robert Irvine in here for an episode of «Restaurant Impossible.» Its almost laughable as to how much of a slap in the face that was. Had I known they were going to serve me a burger on buns from a grocery store I would have just gone straight to Market Basket as I had planned.
In any case, halfway through my burger and the fries finally arrived. Yay! I mean, its what, 5:30 pm and there’s only one guy in the back of the kitchen and maybe only 4 – 5 people in the restaurant including workers? I guess part of the hold up was because they were freshly made, you could definitely taste it, but at least half the fries were overcooked and so discolored that I started to wonder if I accidently got the sweet potato fries. On top of that, half of the fries were the small little annoying pieces that nobody enjoys eating. So, to add insult to injury, not only were the fries annoyingly late, but they weren’t that great.
There’s approximately two places in Boston that can get you a tasty burger meal for around $ 10 and they both happen to just be different locations of the same establishment. That means that Bobby’s Burger Palace is neither here nor there. The burger wasn’t fresh, was a little small, and just wasn’t worthy of Bobby Flay’s name. Meanwhile, the fries were fresh but just not the quality one would expect. If its a burger you crave, there’s many other places that will leave you feeling satisfied. I’m saying this as I finish eating my bowl of ramen.

How can you not have everything available on the menu? Bobby would not be happy. There are also buckets with nasty dirty water from a leak sitting on the floor. The staff is kind of slow too. We were not offered or given silverware. I will likely not return to this restaurant.

Bobby Flay knows burgers! Another great burgerfest for all. Great burgers good onion rings and fries at a good price

BBP is a bit unique in that it is a partially wait-​staffed fast-​food restaurant. Sure, you can walk up to the counter and order take-​out, but if you dine in, you’re handed a number sign for your seats, and a member of the waitstaff serves up your food and checks in that you have everything you need.
I didn’t have room to try the milkshakes, but I think they warrant a return trip. The burgers were really good, and cooked surprisingly well for fast food, but not for Bobby Flay. They were juicy, cooked to temp and flavorful. I got the LA Burger and added some of the jalapeño sauce to it – really good. The buttermilk-​battered onion rings were amazing; I just wish they gave you more than three in the half-​and-​half side order. The sweet potato fries were ok – not the best I have ever had, and I didn’t love the sauce that was served with them.
There are about a half dozen condiments for you to add to your burger including the standards of ketchup and mustard, but also chipotle ketchup, the above-​mentioned jalapeño sauce, burger sauce, and a couple more.
The seating is really cool: every seat is pretty much a counter-​type seat, with dual-​sided counters wrapping through the space and a few communal-​sized tables in the corner.

First off I’m not even a fan of sweet potatoes but these sweet potato fries were amazing. My burger was moist and juicy with a little crunch in all the right places. Service was good, food came out fast and friendly. Only short coming is the location. We need more burger palaces in Boston!

Today was the 3^rd time I used Bobby’s burger palace that’s in Burlington Mall and this is most likely my last try. I was so persistent ’cause the burger itself is actually quite good. the rest — not so much.
I will not spend much time on an order item omission from last time, and completely uncooked burger instead of medium-​well from the time before; let’s focus on today.
Called in advance to place an order, when I was brining my 7 year old from swim practice. young man named Jack took the order. I repeated twice that I need a kid’s cheeseburger and fries to go. when I came to pick it up, he said that I never said that even though I insisted, so I paid for the adult one. His attitude was quite defiant for someone working in service, and frankly, I would not order/​pay for a big size sandwich when I needed it for the kid…
I had to rush since my son was waiting outside in the car, after I paid, Jack said that actually the kid needs to be present when ordering kid size food. I was furious, but had little time to discuss. When I looked at the food in the bag, we couldn’t eat it in the car since the aioli sauce was open container (both) and already spilled everywhere in the bag, when bag was given to me by a young lady. so, we had to wait till we got home to pull it out, unwrap from dirty boxes and it was already cold. Fries when they are cold are not only not good, they are kind of yucky.
oh, and one more thing. I had to wait for anyone to come to the register when I came in (it was 11.55 am, Saturday just about lunch, which was time for lots of crowd). apparently the guy Jack was the only one trained to do register. I had three workers in uniform staring at me, not saying anything, like they were mute, looking lost and speachless, when I was very apparently needing help and explained that it was my order standing there in the pickup window and I wanted to pay. you may want to cross-​train your staff so that one register guy could safely go to the restroom.
it is cute that each complaint has a response from Stephanie D and an email. I wrote first to that email, just to give them an opportunity to respond to me with my concern. The funny thing is — this email is FAKE. it came back undelivered and unrecognized email was the reason.

Love this place… just love it! Every time I have come here, the burger is cooked to perfection. This time my wife and I tried the onion rings along with the awesome sweet potato fries. The rings were really good. I’d say this place is in line with Boston Burger and O’Sullivan’s in Somerville. Hmm, hard to choose a winner.

The person who took my order looked confused when I wanted to make my own burger and not order one of their specials. Most of the staff looked confused. They were out of regular Coke. Most of the tables were not clean and clearly someone was smoking in the mens room.

Terrible. Ordered the crunch salad to go. Was not given any salad dressing or the crunchy tortilla strips. As for the chopped veggies they were pretty much just garbanzo beans. Complete waste of money. The host was wonderful. The kitchen staff need to be trained. I will never be back.

My girlfriend and I decided to try this place after a long day of Christmas shopping. We watch a lot of food network and I love Bobby Flay so we were excited to try this place out. When we first walked in, we took a moment to figure out what we wanted and then we proceeded to order. The young man behind the cash register was inexperienced and made a mistake with the POS system, no big deal. We ordered sodas with our Brunch burger and onion rings. The young man taking the order was not aware that their soda machine was not working and we were told by another employee that we could only have bottled Coke or Sprite. No big deal, we had 2 cokes but the woman in front of us was not told about the soda machine issue and after she took a cup and tried to get so day, they had to figure something out for her too.
The place was dead when we went, only a few people in there at the time and a handful of workers. I counted 3 in the kitchen, 2 at the front, 1 in the dining room bussing and cleaning at all times. The set up was neat, different style than we expected and I like the number card system where you find a place to sit and the food is brought to you based on the number card you took to your table.
The food took a little bit to come out even though it wasn’t busy but not terribly long. The burger was delicious. Good sized patty, cooked perfectly with nice slices of bacon and a fried egg. The onion rings were great too. Lots of flavor in the batter, thick cut and cooked right. Just needed a little more salt and they would have been perfect. The food was definitely the best part of the experience. We took pictures of our burgers and later after we got home, we posted pictures to Instagram. After doing that, we decided to snoop around on Instagram to see what other people had posted. As we were looking through the pictures, we found the account of our server. To our surprise, he posted a lot from work. Lots of selfies of him on the job. One post caught our attention most. This employee posted a video of himself clearly smoking marijuana while on break out of a glass bowl in the kitchen. This was a little disappointing. While we understand that Bobby’s Burger Palace is more of a fast food restaurant than a 5 star sit down, we still expected a little more out of an establishment with Bobby Flay’s name on it. Maybe we’re a little naïve. While we still enjoyed the food, it’s clear reading some of the other reviews on Unilocal that this place doesn’t have the best judgement when it comes to who they hire as their staff. We might go back someday, but we won’t be rushing back anytime soon.

I loved my burger and cannot understand why others wouldn’t like theirs. I think people sometimes want to hate a place, so no matter what they get, they will say it sucked.
Anyway, I got the LA burger and beer battered onion rings. Oh-​me-​Oh-​My! I’m having a hard time deciding which was better… Both were excellent! I’m getting hungry remembering this meal– yummmm!
I can appreciate how people find the seating arrangement ‘awkward’. It must be a West Coast thing– when I went, the place wasn’t packed (I was shocked), so it wasn’t annoying to me. Service was nice, polite and friendly staff, prompt, clean and tasty food. What more do you want?

This dine in has such a cool vibe with an eccentric seating pattern. Lots of bright colors and pictures of onions and peppers on the walls. Each table comes with a assortment of sauces — BBQ, mustard, ketchup, chipotle.
The menu is printed in large letters on the wall while you wait on-​line. If you plan to dine in, pay at the counter then take a seat as your food will be brought to you.
I ordered the turkey LA burger. It comes with avocado, watercress, & cheddar cheese. I replaced the Cheddar for Monterey Jack for an additional $ 1.50. I also ordered the sweet potato fries. The burger was okay — nothing out of the ordinary. Initially when it arrived, they forgot the cheese but the employee immediately took it back to add it. The fries had too much salt which I had to shake off.
As for the service, they desperately needed more staff at hand. It was a busy lunch hour and only 2 employees were working the floor. I waited over 20 min for my food then an additional amount for the mix up. Luckily they were nice about it but that doesn’t change the wait time.
Overall it was a good meal in a cool space. I will return to any of Flay’s chains.
Happy dining!

I’m kinda surprised by the amount of negative reviews on here. I usually have pretty tasty food whenever I’m at BBP. My favorite burger is the Brunch burger — maybe I’m being bias because anything with an egg is delicious to me. Their onion rings, regular/​sweet potato fries are great. Although, I remember one time my onion rings being too oily and I had to dap it. I’ve also had their grilled cheese which was pretty good. I find it odd they serve all their dishes with a pickle — not everyone likes it. I hate pickles.
BBP might not be the best place for burgers but I have very little to complain about. Bobby Flay did a pretty good job with the recipes I think.

Bobby’s is not for the faint of heart or first dates… I don’t think I’ve ever used so many napkins to eat a burger in my life!
I probably had more fun eating my Dallas burger than I do at other burger joints (all those sauces!), and the dining area is really whimsical as well. What with the giant orbs of light and shiny 50s-​esque seating, it’s hard not to feel like a giant kid while you’re here, especially eating those generous (read: giant) onion rings and sipping those delicious, decadent milkshakes.
The patty itself was truthfully not, say, Five Guys level (my baseline for all burger-​related comparison), but the buns were very sesame-​y and had a good texture. I thought my bf’s brunch burger looked delish, and they had a plethora of really solid-​sounding options, with your choice of beef, turkey, or chicken patties. Choice is good – especially when it’s not overwhelming.
Overall, a decent dining choice while you’re at the mall. A word to the wise: you can leave a tip for your servers at the table by sticking your $ on the metal clip on the sauce stand!