After a long drive from the QC to Dead Moines, we arrived ready to eat around 3 p.m. the first thing to know is that Zombie Burger is not a theme restaurant. You are not greeted at the door by a "sexy zombie" in terrible stage make up. It is owned by chef George Formaro, who also owns some fancy pants restaurants in the DM area. We entered the sit down restaurant side, but dashing diners also have a to-go option at the counter.
The interior of the restaurant, luckily, is not filled with bloody brains and loose limbs. It feels a bit like a shiny steel fortress protecting it's diners from evils lurking about.
We sat beneath a mural on the far wall.
The menus mimic a newspaper with news of zombie attacks and cheeky articles on the front, the good stuff on the back. Most of them reference zombie movies, but I'm not cool enough to know which ones.
All the burgers are available as either beef, chicken, veggie burger, or portobello mushroom. The toppings are what distinguish one terrifying treat from the next.
I chose the Trailer Trash with grilled chicken. Richie chose the
and added a fried egg on top because he's worried about low cholesterol.
The joint also has a drink lab with options for sober survivors. I chose the Tallahassee, a shake with cherry Kool aid powder and a Twinkie. Pretty sure 7 year old me had that idea but it didn't quite work out. Richie chose the plain ol' cherry Kool-aid shake.
The shakes were thoroughly blended and had a light artificial cherry flavor, which is pretty much what one would expect from a Kool-aid shake. Tastes like summers in the 80s. We started with some poutine fries which looked about as good as they sound. They tasted OK. Imagine eating french fries dipped in gravy and sprinkled with chunks of cheese. Yep. That's poutine for ya. Like a vulture I picked out the cheese and left the remains.
About 5 minutes later, the burgers rose from the grave and we inspected all of their entrails. Mine included mostly fried versions of traditional trashy foods. Pickles, cheese, and bacon. Yes, chicken fried bacon. And you thought bacon could not be improved.
Richie's massive double burger included American cheese, caramelized onions, bacon, and zombie sauce plus two smushed grilled cheese sandwiches to serve as a bun. There was a lot of grunting and groaning while he was trying to finish this thing.....sort of like a ...zombie?
The food was amazing in the worst way possible. The odd combination of tastes and flavors seemed to work, mostly because everything on my sandwich was fried. It was a little dry because I nixed the ranch and the cheese curds kept popping out. I didn't master the smush-and-eat zombie technique. Ran a 20k the following morning and the Trash sat in my stomach like a rock (brain?) during the whole race. I felt like walking..sort of like a... zombie? Hmmm.
