Ted's Montana Grill St. Johns 2 out of 10

Our burger hunt brought us to Ted's Montana Grill located in the town center.  I've been looking forward to this for a few weeks.  I was very excited to finally taste a Bison burger made by someone who specializes in Bison meats.  First a little about the restaurant.  For sure something to see and experience.  Enough said, back to the burgers.  I think all the burgergeeks were excited and had high hopes for this restaurant.

There is a quote that comes to my mind from Alexander Pope “Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” I'm sure you can already see where this is going. I was disappointed at that burger. Let me get into why I was without getting into to much detail. As you can see from the picture it was for sure a nice looking burger. It was big, loaded with tons of stuff. Of course I had to get the little more fancy one with chili and so on. As a total package it looked promising. Huge onion rings with it, fries and I was excited to let me taste the hopefully first high rated burger of the burgergeeks. Well, I took the first bite and first thing that came to my mind was. Hmmm, taste just like another beef burger. There was no distinct Bison taste to it. I kept going, bite for bite I was looking or this, 'oh wow' factor. Still nothing. I do understand the meat is suppose to taste the same as beef, just better. I was not getting this.

Don't get me wrong with my review here. The burger wasn't bad at all. It was good, but again, not what I expected. If you read my review about hooters I have to say I started to get the same feeling here. It was a feeling of a fancy fast food burger. There was nothing special about it other than that it said it was Bison and with a over $25 dollar lunch bill shock just for myself, gave me another bad taste about the whole experience. I rated them a 2 out of 10 because even though it wasn't a bad burger, there was not a wow factor that put this burger in its own category, it was a fancy burger with a bad fast food after taste to it. BurgerMeister

*********************************************************************************

Today our schedule takes us to Ted's Montana Grill. We decided it was time to go find the "Cadillac" of burgers, so where better than Ted's Montana Grill. 
They're known for their all natural bison, which is supposed to be better than beef, so we had high hopes to find a truly great burger.

My selection was the Red Rock burger. You can choose either a certified Angus beef patty or an all natural bison patty. I had to go for the bison, and I ordered it cooked medium. They top this with pepper jack cheese, fresh diced jalapenos, chopped cilantro and fried onion straws. Finally, they add something 
called Z-sauce, and serve it all on a toasted ciabatta roll, accompanied with french fries. Sure sounded delicious, and at $14 bucks I expected it to be. 

I rate my burgers in 3 main components for consistent ratings; 1) bun 2) burger 3) toppings for a total possible 9 points. I reserve 1 point for what I call the 'wow' factor, which to me is for a unique touch that a restaurant may add to their burger to make it unique.

Ted's serves the Red Rock burger on a ciabatta roll. Ordinarily this would earn top marks for the roll. I love ciabatta rolls, and I like to see something different than a plain hamburger bun. I think a good bun or roll can really add to the overall taste of a burger. Unfortunately, my ciabatta roll was so dry 
that I would say it was almost stale. It just started falling apart when I tried to handled it.

If I've learned one thing about burgers, it's that how the burger is cooked can ruin the whole burger. I had ordered my burger cooked medium, and it was served under cooked, more medium rare. I didn't like the flavor of the bison at all served this rare. 

The cheese, jalapenos, cilantro and onion straws were good. The Z-sauce? It looked and tasted like raspberry jelly. No wow factor there.

So, my search for a "Cadillac" burger ended up with a Yugo. My overall rating for my Red Rock burger is a 2. Truly a disappointment. The most expensive burger turns out to be one of the worst to date, and my bad experience was not the only one among our four burgers. After leaving the restaurant, my fellow Burger Geeks and I discussed the fact that paying so much for a poorly executed burger really 
made the experience seem worse. I considered SUBTRACTING a point for the "wow" factor because "Wow, this burger sucked!", but I decided to let it stand as is.

Burgernator