CHEAP EATS

In the moo-d for good burgers? It’s Mooyah!

— When you mosey through the doors of Mooyah, prepare to be branded.

As you enter, crayon-colored cow cartoons decorate the wall to your left. Beneath your feet, the floor’s a Holstein black and white. Cute cows gaze down from photographs at the far end of the long room, next to a chalkboard headed “Moodledoodle” that invites more kid art.

The new burger joint on Cantrell Road - the second of potentially many in Arkansas for the Frisco, Texas-based chain - drives its concept hard: a fresher take on burgers, shakes and fries, with kids the focus of the setting and the food. And the concept works. There’s always room for a family-oriented fast-food place that does a few things well.

The menu isn’t quite as limited as the cow decor suggests (and in fairness, potatoes get a lot of play around the restaurant, too). In addition to beef-based burgers, Mooyah offers a turkey burger and a flavorful veggie burger with a Southwestern flavor, as well as a pleasantly substantial bratwurst-like hot dog.

To help you assemble your burger, the restaurant uses a Five Guys-like “build your own” ordering system, taking things a step further by providing a card to mark with your selections. You choose your burger, bun (white, wheat or lettuce, aka the “Iceburger”), toppings and extras. The toppings - nine sauces and eight vegetables - are free but the extras, including cheese (five varieties), bacon, avocado and fried onion strings, cost 75 to 95 cents each.

Kids 10 and younger get cards to fill in too. Theirs offer smaller food portions, which adults are allowed to order too (at least when I was there). Youngsters also get the homey option of having their burgers or grilled-cheese sandwiches cut in halves or quarters. “Little Moo Meals” come with entree, fries or applesauce and soft drink for $4.95.

Filling in the menu cards seems like it should be a time saver, but I’m not convinced that the time-honored verbal method isn’t just as fast or faster. The service was friendly, and the staff answered my questions with alacrity, but the cashier seemed to be still getting accustomed to transferring the order from the card to the register. Once the crew has been on the job for a few more weeks (the store opened in late June), things should move more quickly.

Seeing every option laid out on the card makes it easy to be tempted to try more things. Prices are clearly marked but still added up to a bit more than expected, especially as there are no discount combinations available for adults. My group of three didn’t keep close track of prices while ordering, and by the end we were up to about $35. We did order two shakes and two regular-size fries (one sweet potato, one unsweet) to go with our cheeseburgers, which made for slightly more size and cost than a typical meal. By comparison, my usual one-person order of a burger with cheese, small fries (less than half the size of the regular) and regular (22-ounce) drink would come to $9.60 before tax.

Mooyah was not too crowded at 1:30 p.m. on a recent weekday, and the staff called out my name in a little less than 10 minutes: “Your Mooyah order is ready !”Branding, baby.

Although our three orders were to be eaten there, they came separately bagged instead of on trays. This made it easy for me to carry them all, but a little inconvenient to eat. The fry portions generously spilled over the sides of their cups, but I would’ve appreciated this arrangement more if I were plucking fries from the bag on the way home rather than sitting down in the restaurant.

The large room was comfortable, with booths and tables fairly widely spaced. In addition to cow stuff, boxes of potatoes sat near the two cash registers, with baskets of buns and potatoes hanging overhead. Several flat screen TVs hang high on the walls,one airing a “Stop the Insanity!” exercise infomercial while I guiltily indulged in a milkshake.

Not that the guilt slowed me down. If Mooyah’s bovine decor is a bit reminiscent of Ben & Jerry’s, its hand-spun shakes actually may give the Vermont guys a run for their money. My delicious Butterfinger shake (a narrow winner over the cookie dough option) clung thickly to the straw outside and clogged it inside, definitely a spooning proposition.

The standard burger comes two patties thick, which I fitted out with two tomato slices, lettuce, fried onion strings and gratifyingly well-melted Swiss cheese, making for a mouth-stretching sandwich.A single-patty burger with the right extras could easily make a satisfying meal. The turkey burger proved not as filling but just as juicy and tasty, its flavor fighting through even when covered in pepper jack cheese and jalapeno slices. The veggie burger had a welcomed black-bean spice, with some cooling, fresh avocado slices on top. The nine sauces include barbecue, Mooyah sauce (a creamy Thousand Island) and Cholula hot sauce.

The thick-cut fries (with strips of skin) were good, but sweet potato fries are definitely worth the upgrade of 50 cents (to $2.45) for small and $1 more for regular. The seasoning seemed to have some brown sugar sweetness, as well as a hint of cinnamon, to enhance the natural sugar of the sweet potatoes. The cut of the fries ensured there was enough substance to balance out the generous salt on the regular fries and seasoningon the sweet potato fries. Our trio had plenty left over from two regular orders.

Colleague Eric Harrison, in his March 22 Transitions column, reported Mooyah has ambitions to expand aggressively in Arkansas. The first thing a visitor notices at the company’s website, mooyah.com (where you can order online to save time), is the question, “WANT A MOOYAH FRANCHISE?”

Who wouldn’t? From good burgers come cash cows.

Mooyah

Address: 14810 Cantrell

Road at Pinnacle Creek

Shopping Center (with

another location in Hot

Springs)

Hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m.

daily

Cuisine: Burgers, hot

dogs, fries, shakes

Credit cards: AE, D, MC,

V

Alcoholic beverages: No

Wheelchair accessible:

Yes

Carryout: Yes

(501) 868-1091

mooyah.com

Weekend, Pages 38 on 07/12/2012

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