Hot Rod City Disappoints

Recently, my family decided to patronize a theme restaurant in New Philadelphia, Ohio. It’s called Hot Rod City. It’s decorated with old cars, license plate and old fashioned gas pumps. If you go to their webpage you can see pictures of what it looks like inside (they don’t allow customers to take pictures or videos while inside their establishment). And you’ll see some pictures of their “cuisine”. What you won’t find is a menu listing their prices—or images of the actual size of their cuisine.

When we walked in we were overwhelmed by the smell of old oil. Hot Rod City is built inside an old garage and it smells like it. I expected the garage smell would be muted by the smell of food, but that wasn’t the case. I was a little put off by that, but the family loved the decor and were anxious to eat.

Our server sat us and said she’d be back to take our drink order, but the busser came over and did that. She disappeared in the back for a few minutes. The restaurant was pretty empty and there was another girl, so I don’t know what she was doing. When she finally came back over, she seemed surprised that someone had not only taken our drink order, but brought the drinks. I asked her a couple of questions about the menu and she seemed slightly confused. I’m particular about onion rings, for instance, and don’t like the breaded kind. I prefer the battered. She assured me the onion rings were battered and homemade.

I ordered the Chicago Style Dog, minus the celery salt. My husband order the “brutus” burger, which was touted as their largest burger—and my husband loves to eat big burgers. The menu told me that I was going to get a 1/2 pound dog loaded with cucumbers, onions, tomatoes and relish and that the dog cost $5.59 (or .69, I forget exactly). It would cost me nearly $3 extra to substitute the onion rings for the chips. That was fine because I was expecting awesome onion rings. My husband didn’t want to substitute and his burger would cost him $8. Our daughter got a regular dog and chips.

I was unbelievably disappointed when our food came. If my dog was 1/2 pound then I’m the Queen of England. It was the most miserable excuse of a hot dog I’ve ever seen in my life. It was about 6 inches long and no fatter than my husband’s pinky (that’s no exaggeration). The cucumbers, onions and tomatoes were diced and I’m pretty sure there was less than a tablespoon of the three combined on the bottom of my bun—I counted 6 pieces of cucumber, 2 pieces of onion and less than 10 pieces of tomato. The relish was barely noticeable. The dog was literally hidden by the bun. There was probably 1/4 inch of space on either end of the bread. Two Lil’ Smokie sausages would have been more meat and the “loaded” part was pathetic. What’s worse is that I couldn’t taste either my dog or the measly toppings when I ate it. All I tasted was the bun, because it was so much bigger than anything inside of it. I’m betting that the plastic basket it came in, combined with the onion rings and dog, is what weighed 1/2 pound.

And my onion rings? Breaded. For $3 I got a total of 5 medium size rings. I was not at all pleased with that.

My husband’s burger consisted of two 3 inch by 3 inch slider burgers that were maybe 1/2 inch thick and had a couple of slivers of sautéed onions on top. “Brutus” was laughable. He did get a decent portion of homemade, unsalted, unseasoned chips and he seemed to like those a bit. My daughter ate her dog, but didn’t touch the chips. She was too enthralled by the decor and wasn’t too interested in her food anyway—which was probably good considering.

Our server visited us to take our order and drop off our food. She was missing in action most of the time. At one point, my daughter flipped the switch to a little light that was adjacent to our booth and that’s when our server popped up. Apparently we were to use the light only to call her if we needed something. Who knew? I certainly didn’t. There’s no note in the menu, there’s no note under the light and our server didn’t mention it to use before she disappeared. I’m not a fan of having to hunt down my server when I need something, especially when there are barely any other diners in the restaurant, so this was a big turn off for me. We didn’t see our server again until we had to switch on the light for our check and then it was the other young lady that showed up to help us. She went in the back and retrieved our server who brought the $32 bill.

Now, in Ohio and in this particular town, $32 can buy a really decent meal . Why, just up the road is the Texas Roadhouse and for that money my family could have dined on small, but tasty steaks (a small sirloin, a burger and a dog as a matter of fact). And for $10 we could have gone to the Dairy Queen and gotten two dogs, some onion rings and a decent sized burger complete with lettuce, tomato and onion for $5. We certainly didn’t get our money’s worth at Hot Rod City.

I would most definitely not recommend this restaurant for anyone on a budget or with an appetite. The decor is interesting, but for only so long because when your food comes you wonder where they left the rest of it. If you’re interested in seeing a garage themed restaurant I suggest Quaker Steak and Lube in Canton. There you get good food at a decent price and you can see stock cars, a plethora of license plates and a lot neon signs. If you’re interested in a 50’s themed restaurant just skip this one completely. The only thing “50s” about this restaurant is the couple of gas pumps and maybe one of the old cars they have parked in the store. If you like the smell of oil and car parts and the occasional classic car drive-in, check out their page for their upcoming events. Classic cars are a nice distraction while you’re there.

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