Hamburger Hamlet Spiffs Up Dinner Menu

The Hamburger Hamlet restaurant chain announced Thursday that it has launched an expanded dinner menu aimed at boosting its dinner sales.

The restaurants, with 10 locations in Southern California, have long offered an array of gourmet burgers, soups, sandwiches, salads, pasta dishes, seafood, chili and appetizers for lunch and dinner.

“We’ve traditionally had a lunch crowd and we think this concept has plenty of room to grow into the dinner segment,” said Robert L. Carl, a vice president and spokesman of Koo Koo Roo Enterprises Inc., Irvine-based parent of the Hamburger Hamlet chain.

Hamburger Hamlet was the second chain Thursday to unveil an expanded menu to increase dinner sales. Irvine-based Taco Bell Corp., the nation’s largest Mexican fast-food chain, also rolled out its so-called Grande Meals line of larger menu items to spur dinner sales.

The new Hamburger Hamlet dinner fare, called “Hamlet at Night,” includes turkey meatloaf and crab cakes in addition to such specialties as halibut steak crested with macadamias, grilled pork chop with apple cranberry chutney and Santa Fe chicken with sauteed vegetables. For dessert, the chain is introducing a new lime pie with toasted granola crust.

Carl said the chain will send 80,000 direct mailers to potential customers in Southern California.