It would be hard to have a simpler menu than the one at Home Fresh Burgers, in the one-two-three-time The Hop location on Cantrell Road in Little Rock.
No sandwiches, no dogs, no desserts.
Burgers. Fries. Soft drinks. Shakes. That’s all.
And all of that is pretty darn simple, too. The burgers consist of quarter-pound, fresh-not-frozen beef patties, flame-cooked on a grill. To order. And there are just four options: Hamburger Fresh ($2.50), Cheeseburger Fresh ($2.75), Double Fresh (that’s a half-pound burger, $3.50). And the $2.50 Veggie Fresh.
Want cheese? It’s plain orange-yellow, square-slice American. No Swiss, no Gouda, no cheddar, no blue. And it all comes on a commercial, not an artisinal, bun.
All our burgers were excellent. A regular burger made a nice snack; the Double, however, is a real meal. If you can unhinge your jaw to get a full bite, more power to ya; otherwise you’ll probably have to nibble.
Burgers take about 10 minutes to cook, not an extraordinary length of time for fresh patties of that size (unless, of course, you’re standing outside in 45-degree weather with howling winds, as we were earlier this week).
Each patty in a Double cheeseburger gets its own slice of cheese. The grillmaster (it’s a mom-and-pop place,and pop does the cooking) carefully tops one patty upon the other before transferring them to the bun on the back counter, preprepared with your choice of toppings.
The fries ($1.50) are fresh, hand-cut and skin-on. They’re lightly seasoned (was that a touch of garlic we detected?). There’s no such thing as a large order - one size fits all, just enough to fill a smallpaper sleeve with the word “delicious” printed multiple times on it. And that’s not an overstatement.
Soft drinks come in a 16-ounce foam cup. Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, Dr Pepper, iced tea, $1.50. Fresh lemonade is $2.25.
Shakes are $3.25. (That’s a relief. The missing decimal point on the menu board made us a little afraid itwould actually come to over three bills.) Like the fries, there’s only the one size. Like the burgers, there’s not a wide choice: vanilla, chocolate or strawberry.
They’re handmade. And by handmade, we mean the man put the Yarnell’s ice cream, the milk, the malt powder and the syrup in the the 16-ounce foam cup and churned it up with a hand mixer, not a milkshake machine.
There wasn’t nearly enough chocolate syrup in our chocolate shake (just enough to convince us, at least color-wise, that it wasn’t vanilla), but it was plenty thick and plenty tasty.
That everything is very fresh and you can watch it being prepared, and that the prices are competitive (or better), gives Home Fresh a good boost into the suddenly competitive fresh-burgermarket (where it vies against locally owned David’s and the Mooyah and Five Guys franchises).
Unlike those places, Home Fresh is purely a pick-up place. Although, if you absolutely must eat on the premises, there’s a shaggy, shabby, sagging, splintery picnic table out front.
The old Hop building, despite a fairly fresh coat of red and white paint, still sags a bit around the eaves. It’s easier to get in and out of the tiny parking lot since that part of Cantrell Road was widened a year or so ago, but left turns are still a challenge.
And alas, we found that if it took longer than about 10 minutes between the time they pushed our paper-bag-enclosed food out of the delivery window until we unwrapped it and ate it, our burger had cooled to warm (the double burger stayed hotter longer) and our fries had gotten downright chilly. (The owners originally planned to open on Main Street, which would have been a blessing for downtown burger biters, but not every dream comes to fruition the way they’re planned, alas.)
Home Fresh Burgers doesn’t yet have a credit card machine, so for the time being, at least, you’ll have to bring cash. And earlier this week the phone was out, so picking up a remotely placed to-go order was out of the question.
Home Fresh Burgers
Address: 7706 Cantrell
Road, Little Rock
Hours: 11 a.m.-7 p.m.
Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-8
p.m. Saturday
Cuisine: Burgers. Fries. Soft
drinks. Shakes.
Credit cards: Not yet
Alcoholic beverages: No
Wheelchair accessible: Yes
Carryout: Only
(501) 219-8140 (but be
prepared to get a “not in
operation” message)
Weekend, Pages 38 on 03/28/2013