Now Serving: The Greene Turtle

The Greene Turtle is a regional chain of bars, but essentially a staple in the area for nearly 40 years. And they have loads of locations in the area. Fells, Fed, Towson, White Marsh, Owings Mills, BWI, Hunt Valley, Columbia, and so on. If you live in the Baltimore, you're probably less than 10 minutes from one of their locations. They have a reputation to all things local, and their advertising is quick to shame national chains for being generic, not knowing the history of the city, etc.

The reviews on Yelp, which hang around 2.5 stars, seems to lend this isn't the best place to be. Yelp isn't the end all be all metric for what a restaurant is all about, and even though some can be damning, it can generally give you a pretty good idea.

I enter one of their Baltimore locations on a busy Saturday night. The bar is packed, and noisy as hell. What I expect from a bar in Baltimore. I'm meeting a friend who ordered food 30 minutes ago that hasn't come out yet, which frightens me, because I'm super hungry. Now, they have lots of servers on staff, but clearly there is a distinction between those assigned to tables and those in the bar. The ones at tables are having fun, playing grab ass with each other around the hostess table. The bar, overloaded, doesn't have nearly enough people.

I have enough time to look over the menu. I've been here a few times before, and have had their PBJ burger (which might sound gross, but is in fact amazing in both how it tastes, and the fact that it works paired together). This time through, I want the Chesapeake burger. Their never frozen Angus certified beef, seasoned with old bay, topped with their signature crab dip, smoked bacon, American cheese, lettuce & tomato on brioche.

I'm finally able to track down someone, who quickly takes my drink order and runs away. Drops my beer without me even noticing. A few minutes later, someone else brings my friend his dinner (45 min ticket time), and I'm finally able to order. My food arrives relatively quickly (12 min). Maybe they were out of the weeds by then, or I got extremely lucky.

The burger is great. Slightly undercooked (I like it medium well, this was closet to medium, but still worked) Seasoned very well. The crab dip is oozing from every side of the bun, and is some of the best I've had recently, very cheesy. Bacon is a little too crispy, but a good crunch nevertheless. Bun had a good buttery taste. All in all, the burger is very very good. I'm just not sure it's worth the process involved to get one.