Toot's

                We had been running around Mark’s old stomping grounds out near Loveland and were actually looking for another restaurant that had unfortunately closed before we could sample its wares. So we decided to stop at Toot’s. It was there and we were hungry.

                Neither of us knew much about Toot’s except that it is a small chain of family style restaurants with five locations, three in Tennessee, one in Bowling Green, KY, and one at 12191 Montgomery Rd. in Loveland.

                The Saturday lunch hour when we arrived was pretty quiet with just a few customers. The décor and menu is typical of this style of restaurant. Pick any Friday’s or Applebee’s and you can find much of the same type of items hanging on the wall and grub on the menu.

Burgers

                We both got the Classic Half Pound Burger that the menu claimed was “America’s # 1 sandwich choice.” Not they weren’t claiming that their burger was America’s number one, just that the cheeseburger is the sandwich of choice. Clever wording to make it appear that they’re burger is seen as the best. More on that in a bit.

                Josh opted for the American cheese along with lettuce and tomato. Mark went with the provolone with lettuce, tomato and pickle. The burgers came out and they were big. Quite big. A half-pound patty is going to be big. What it shouldn’t be is overcooked. We know that a lot of restaurants have begun taking away a diner’s choice of how their meat is prepared. Probably from a fear of someone getting sick and then suing.

                What we had was charred well done on a flat top grill with bits of crust rimming the edges. Now since the patty was large it had to be a decent cut. Ground chuck may have shrunk up more than that so our guess was that it was at least ground sirloin. Either that or the fat content was so low (90-10?) that there wasn’t any shrinkage. Of course with low fat content come low flavor and these burgers really didn’t have much flavor.

                For both of us, the cheese and trimmings provided the biggest flavor burst when biting into the burger. The meat may as well have not been there for all the good it did to America’s number one sandwich choice.

                Along with the burgers came curly fries that were the highlight of the meal. Lightly seasoned with a Cajun salt, these tasty little curls of potato way outweighed the sandwich.

                We had good, prompt, friendly service and it is easy to see how the atmosphere of this place could be fun with the right crowd. Unfortunately, neither of us ever plan on going back to see if that’s true.