Mixture of Ground Chuck and Chuck Berry Manages an OK Burger

Jackhammer through all the layers of gloss and glitz and mystique that armor La Jolla’s new Hard Rock Cafe and you’ll discover that the place is, at its heart of hearts, a glorified soda fountain.

But you have to do a lot of digging to arrive at this ultimate, incontrovertible truth, because the Hard Rock is so many things:

- A museum of rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia.

- A cultural phenomenon.

- A haberdasher to the T-shirt set.

- The envy of just about everyone in the restaurant business.

Restaurant owners all over town have been seasoning their food with salt tears since the Hard Rock opened to the kind of business that most restaurateurs wouldn’t dare to fantasize about. Even at 9:30 on a rainy, wind-swept night last week, about 50 patrons waited patiently on the sidewalk to gain admission to this monument to ground chuck and Chuck Berry.

A Novelty in This Town

Lines at restaurant doors are a novelty in this town, but so is Hard Rock, which has the cachet of affiliation with an international network of Hard Rock Cafes (actually two separate chains, with locations from Stockholm to Honolulu) that are known as hangouts for rock musicians and other pop-culture celebrities. Although in the final analysis the Hard Rock is just a place to go for a burger and fries, its reputation as a place to see and be seen guaranteed the restaurant the comfortable lines that stretch at both lunch and dinner.

It seems safe to say that the younger you are, the better you’ll like Hard Rock, although animated settings can be attractive to anyone, and this joint certainly jumps. The nonstop rock music comes on strong and drives up the volume of chattering voices until the room sounds like Babel, but no matter: This is a crowd that thrives on Talking Heads. And, should the flow of humanity cease to be interesting (a situation that, quite frankly, is hard to imagine), you can always turn your attention to the immense collection of signed lyrics and used guitars (from Def Leppard, Pink Floyd and Dire Straits, no less) that covers most available wall space.

The menu almost seems an anticlimax when it arrives, but the Hard Rock is, in the end, a restaurant. And it is here that the place reveals the apple pie, apple-cheeked side of its personality, which seems so at odds with the featured memorabilia from Sid Vicious and the Sex Pistols. The menu peels away the layers of pretense that shroud Hard Rock to lay bare the soda fountain within, and, when it does, the place becomes most interesting, because just about all of us, no matter what sophistication we may claim, like this kind of food.

The Hard Rock’s vaunted hamburgers are the foundation upon which the chain’s empire has been built, but these are, to quote one profoundly perceptive guest, “just OK.” The burger sampled was impressive in size and presentation, although it made a weak delivery on taste.

Packed Rather Than Shaped

A third-pound patty nestled between a good, toasted bun, but the meat had been packed rather than gently shaped and thus was tough and dry; a packed burger renders its juices because it has no space in which to retain them. The plate included enough pommes frites to make a Frenchman cry “ oncle “ (there was at least half a pound of potatoes), and included a respectable green salad moistened with a homemade dressing.

The prices of the four featured burgers range from $5.75 to $6.75, and the offerings run from plain Jane to patties garnished with cheese or chili, and a bacon-cheese-avocado special that obviously was created for the Southern California market. Onion rings appear as an appetizer, a role they play convincingly. These are coated in a homemade batter that fries up crisp, and the only point of contention that might be raised is that the rounds of onion could be just a touch heftier. As it was, these were excellent examples of the drive-in onion rings that 20 years ago were a culinary mainstay of this country’s youth.

The kitchen turns in its best performance with the (relatively) more formal entrees. Again because this is Southern California, the menu places some emphasis on fresh fish, and offers a couple of choices of the day as well as swordfish and an ahi sandwich, the last made of “jetfresh handpicked ahi tuna” that is quoted at the Honolulu market price. These offerings are grilled, and most are basted with a lime-cilantro butter of some flavor; a pair of thick ono filets came off beautifully and, given today’s seafood prices, seemed a bargain at $9.95.

The menu features a lime-marinated barbecued chicken breast and the “watermelon” baby ribs as specialties. The flavor of the marinade suffused the chicken and counterpointed the flavor of the charred edges--it was surprisingly good. The ribs, coated with a watermelon-based barbecue sauce, were satisfactory but no more, unless one prefers a sweet barbecue sauce to one that has a little bite to it.

General Simplicity

Salads and sandwiches round out the menu and emphasize the general simplicity of the fare. There is a cafe “chopped” salad that sounds like an approximation of a Cobb salad; a grilled cheese sandwich; a club sandwich; and, for the daring, a vegetarian sandwich that includes beets and daikon sprouts among its many ingredients, all of them layered between slices of honey whole wheat bread. This does not sound like something Bruce Springsteen would try, but then again, you never know.

The Hard Rock reaches its apple pie zenith with apple pie, baked on the premises and topped, by request, with ice cream or cheese. The mood of the dessert list is indulgent in a way that seemed innocent to generations less concerned with waistlines, and there is a spectacular hot fudge sundae that easily can be shared by two guests. A chocolate shake had the proper consistency and even appeared in a glass fitted in a metal holder, but it evidently was made by someone too young to know that chocolate shakes are made with vanilla ice cream--it is the syrup that supplies the chocolate punch. This one was based on chocolate ice cream and lacked all finesse; it was un-American.

Hard Rock Cafe corporate literature reveals that about a third of the chain’s total sales are of merchandise rather than food and drink.

Hard Rock certainly is not shy about pushing its T-shirts, sweat shirts and leather jackets, nor is the public reticent about buying them, because the lines at the merchandise windows can stretch--again--right out the door.

There is also a “promotion person” (as one described himself) who calls on the table at least once during the meal and offers to deliver any of the items mentioned on a printed list; the service is intended to spare guests the indignity of waiting at the window. It’s a sure bet that shirts bearing the logo “Hard Rock Cafe San Diego” will soon be seen on sidewalks from Beijing to Beirut.

HARD ROCK CAFE

909 Prospect St., La Jolla

456-5456

Lunch and dinner daily

Credit cards accepted

A meal for two, including a glass of house wine each, tax and tip, $20 to $40.