Located across the street and just south of Newport on the Levee, Riverwalk Café has put itself in a good position to draw on the crowds heading to that destination’s many venues. Looking more like a neighborhood joint than the strip mall in which it resides, Riverwalk is filled with the requisite televisions and wall mounted memorabilia or your standard sports bar.
With a menu heavy on sandwiches and bar food, on the surface the Riverwalk doesn’t seem to offer up anything new and unique beyond the location at 136 E. 3rd St. and on the web at http://riverwalksportscafe.com/.
We went on a Saturday around lunch time and found that the place had a handful of people enjoying a meal, a drink and a game on one of the numerous televisions. The atmosphere was good, what you would expect in a newer sports bar. And the service was fast and friendly. In fact our server joked with us along with the others in the place. It’s always refreshing to see someone enjoying themselves and their job.
The Burgers
We both ordered up the Big League Double Cheeseburger, two quarter pound patties stacked with cheese, a garden and tartar sauce on a Kaiser bun. The burgers come served with kettle chips and French fries are extra. This seems to be a growing trend that Mark didn’t mind but Josh opted for the fries.
Let’s cut to the chase. The burgers were good and tasty. You could actually taste the beef and it was a nice lean, probably 80-20 mix, with enough fat to give it flavor but not so much that it shrinks into oblivion.
While shrinkage wasn’t the problem, the size of the patties, or rather the size of them compared to that of the Kaiser bun, was. By how full we were after eating it was obvious that we had enjoyed two quarter pound patties each but just look at this picture of what was left over on Josh’s plate after the he polished off the meat and you’ll see the one thing that disappointed us. Even in the shots of before we started eating you can see how much bigger the bun is than the meat.
We know this should really matter that much but for us it’s become a huge pet peeve. How difficult is it to buy buns that are the same relative size as your burger? Or, if you profess to make the patties by hand, how difficult is it to pat them out to fit the bun rather than look like that old “where’s the beef” commercial?
Now to the kettle chips. These were more like your average, every day potato chips. It’s like they went out and bought a couple bags of Grippo’s and dumped them on Mark’s plate. Kettle chips are supposed to be thicker and more substantial than regular potato chips. These didn’t hit the mark.
As for Josh’s fries, they were pretty pedestrian as well. Nothing exciting, they were more like so many other places that sell standard fries.
On the whole we liked this place, though from the past couple of paragraphs you probably wouldn’t have known it. The atmosphere and the service are very good. The burger itself is tasty and very, very filling. Just expect to toss out a lot of bun if you eat there.
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