MINNEAPOLIS A steak knife can say a lot about a restaurant concept, according to Phil Roberts, who outfitted Parasole Restaurant Holdings’ new Burger Jones venture with a blade Indiana Jones might brandish.
“You don’t really need it for our burgers, but it reinforces the steak-y quality of our burgers,” said Roberts, a co-founder of the multi-concept Parasole, whose earlier creations have included Manny’s Steakhouse, Chino Latino, The Oceannaire and Buca di Beppo. Besides, he said, other options just didn’t fit. “A plastic knife would be girlie.”
Not that Burger Jones is aimed at the he-man set. The Minneapolis restaurant is named after a fictional character who’d more likely inspire the chess club than captain the school football team to victory. He serves as the concept’s logo.
“We spent a lot of time tweaking the logo to get the right amount of nerdiness, because nerdiness is in right now,” Roberts said. “We wanted the place to be cool but not pretentious, where you feel you might not be cool enough. I meant to make everything seem very approachable, very accessible, very blue collar -- the kind of place where you’d go every day.”
Yet there’s a tongue-in-cheek quality that adds cache without pretension, he said.
“There’s a difference between humor and wit,” Roberts said. “We went for wit.”
That effort extended to such tabletop flourishes as providing dish towels as napkins, serving the burgers in miniature sheet pans, providing pickles in an old-fashioned crock, and offering draft beer in a “growler,” a half-gallon moonshiner jug that’s brought to the table in a bucket of ice. It smacks more of Brooks & Dunn than Moet & Chandon.
“All it takes is one going through the dining room to get everyone interested in them,” said Parasole's chief operating officer Donna Fahs, noting that the growlers are a big seller. The servings are priced at $15 for beers that sell by the pint for $4, and at $22 for drafts offered in pints for $6.
Similarly, one of Burger Jones’ signature cocktails is the Hillbilly Hooch, a lemonade-based drink delivered in a Mason jar.
French fries are offered as a sampler of three types — Parmesan waffle, maple-bacon sweet potato, and Russet potato — served in a basket atop a pedestal perhaps six inches high, the dipping sauces tucked underneath. “We do the Tower to celebrate our fries,” explained Roberts. “It’s very practical, too, because it makes room on the table,” since the dips are positioned underneath. The Tri-Fry Tasting Tower sells for $9.99.
When served as a side, the fries are presented in an overflowing cup standing upright on the tray-cum-plate. The hand-cut Russets sell for $2.99 an order. The waffle fries fetch $3.49, and the sweet potato fries, flavored with bacon and maple, are priced at $3.99.
But the main spotlight is on the burgers. Served in stainless-steel cookie-baking trays, stacked high with condiments, the steak knife on the side, the burgers are intended to be a familiar item recast as something out of the ordinary. They’re offered at three prices: $6.99, $8.99 and $9.99, depending on the toppings. Dog Burgers, or Burger Jones’ version of the hot dog, cost $7.99.
“The worst burger you ever had was probably a very good burger,” Roberts said. “They’re everywhere, and you can get a great burger in any number of places. It’s not about the burger. It’s about the experience, about everything that’s there in the restaurant.”
Roberts said he and his team were very mindful of shaping that experience with Burger Jones’ glasses, dishware and other elements of the tabletop. “It’s something people touch, right there in front of them,” he said. “The tabletop comes across with a message. It tells them what this concept is about.”
And the investment, he said, is minimal. “When you open a restaurant, the cost isn’t in the finishes, it’s in the plumbing, the air conditioning. It’s not in the tabletop or the chairs.”
Burger Jones’ costs kept prices at a level where the per-person check averages $14.27, which includes a drink, Roberts said. It’s no wonder, he said, “that we have people there four, five days a week.”
Opened in May, the 4,500-square-foot restaurant is on target to hit $4.5 million in sales for its first year of operation, according to Parasole, which typically operates only one-of-a-kind concepts.
“We’re going to do more of these,” Roberts said.