by Elise Van Dam
When I am having a bad day I crave a good cheeseburger, fries and a coke. This meal is my comfort food; it makes my day a little brighter.
In my hometown of San Diego, In-N-Out is the restaurant where I find my comfort meal, but unfortunately it is not in Spokane. I have been searching high and low for three years, have gone to multiple restaurants to find the best burger and now I feel I have found it at Rusty Roof’s Burger and Shake Shack on 101 East Hastings Road.
Frank and Shanna Haney opened Rusty Roofs Burger and Shake Shack on Oct. 18, 2010. The couple wanted to create a restaurant that had the environment of a sit-down restaurant with a fast food twist. The restaurant uses all fresh ingredients, from all-beef patties to homemade sauces.
“We wanted to offer something a little different with better quality and worth your money,” Frank Haney said.
Currently they are planning on opening a second location on Hamilton Street by Gonzaga University in about six weeks.
All the burgers on the menu were tempting. If you are a meat lover, I would recommend the Rusty Signature: season beef patty, house sauce, shredded pork, apple wood smoked bacon, pastrami, cheddar cheese, grilled onions, sautéed mushrooms, tomato and lettuce. If you are not a burger fan then I would recommend trying the Grilled Chicken Sandwich or the Garden Patch Burger.
The menu also consists of frozen custard milkshakes, from the traditional chocolate to fresh huckleberry. The restaurant uses top quality ingredients and the custard is made in the restaurant.
“Their huckleberry milkshake is delicious,” Whitworth alumna and customer Robyn Louis said. “It is perfect for sharing.”
I tried the Rusty Cheeseburger. I loved every aspect of the burger. It tasted fresh and had a lot of flavor. The patty was juicy. It was nice to see dark leaf lettuce instead of the traditional Iceberg lettuce. The burger also had tomatoes, onions and pickles with the restaurant’s house sauce. The bun was soft and fresh and came from Alpine Bistro and Bakery on Monroe Street.
The only downfall to this fabulous meal was I did not realize garlic Parmesan fries were included in the meal and if I wanted salted fries, I had to ask. Do not get me wrong, the fries were good, but I am not a huge fan of garlic Parmesan fries. I eat a few and then I am done with them. Besides the confusion of the fries, I thought this was a great meal that was worth every penny.
Contact Elise Van Dam at evandam13@my.whitworth.edu.