Gambling on a Good Lunch

In my family, road trip routes are planned with dining destinations in mind. We do our research and pull out our 'if we're ever in such-and such' lists and create a plan. It's fun to stop at unique local places or spots that we don't have in our neighborhoods.

Our trip home from Rye, NY this past weekend presented us with quite a few travel routes. I started thinking about the cities we'd pass through and some good lunch options. It seems like all the cooking shows recently have been featuring burger challenges - guess it's a sign of the times. Burgers are affordable (except for that $5k burger from Hubert Keller) and definitely embraced by many different cuisines.

We opted for a route up through Connecticut casino country and pulled off the highway into Mohegan Sun to visit Bobby's Burger Palace. Bobby Flay is on a lot of TV and magazines - so it's hard to miss that he has a new burger place. We placed our orders for some geographically diverse burgers and found a spot to do some great people watching. The gambling crowd is pretty interesting at 2 p.m. on a Sunday.

We went for three very different burgers plus some shakes and two types of fries. The Philly burger - peppers, onions and cheese. The Dallas burger - spice crusted with BBQ sauce, pickles, and slaw. The L.A. burger with avocado relish, jack cheese, watercress and tomato. The shakes (mango and a black&white) were tasty and the sauce with the sweet potato fries was great. It was a nice tangy horseradish mustard. I took home a take-out menu to use as inspiration for creating some new burger dishes at home. I'll have to create my own signature burger to sell for thousands!

Happy eating from Good Cook Doris, her brother (of the Indy BBQ fare fame, on the left), and the hubby (of "When He Fends for Himself", on the right).