There's a good chance you'll be roving Deep Ellum soon, hunting for food. If you're a City of Ate regular, it's a safe bet you'll be on the brain-eating-zombie-like hunt for a cheeseburger that doesn't suck. So here's some great news: The Green Room, which shed its fancy skeleton last year and updated its image to be a little more White Snake-esque, has some food that really, really doesn't suck. They have steak tacos with heaping piles of pickled red onions and carnitas with a Dr Pepper gravy, which, holy hell mouth, have you heard of a better combination of words?
Late last night, when the Mardi Gras jangling brass was pouring onto Elm Street from the Twilite Lounge, The Green Room was quiet -- except for, you know, the heavy metal playing on the jukebox. A big, colorful chalkboard above the exposed kitchen tells you the menu. Def Leppard's "Foolin" was playing. So, let's get to the burger:
I had the Blacktooth, which was 10 bucks. It came with an avalanche of french fries, and a creamy arugula slaw that had a laser beam of garlic. The burger came with tomatoes, a healthy blanket of Paula Lambert's smoked mozzarella and -- wait for it -- a sauce of reduced Crown Royal and Coca-Cola.
It was sweet and boozy, but when you poured that stuff over the salty, smoked mozzarella, it was delicious. I threw that blindingly garlicky slaw on top, and that made it Heisenberg-good. The kitchen suggested I cook it medium, which didn't have a hint of red, but the half-pound patty was juicy and had that insanely addictive griddled crunch thing.
A couple of complaints: The brioche bun was soggy on the bottom, and that arugula slaw had enough garlic in it to be a Scorcese movie. Otherwise, I'd vote this better than Twisted Root for getting burger-drunk in Deep Ellum. Food just tastes better when it's accompanied by power chords.
