Ted R.
Yelp
Nouvelle Brewing is brought to you by the Travail people. It's in the old Pig Ate My Pizza location in Robbinsdale. I have to give a lot of props to the Travail people for bringing quality and innovative food to Robbinsdale.
They are known for being trendy, being cutting-edge, and never sticking to one concept for very long.
The Star Tribune had a recent article about the Dream Burger which caught my attention, so we headed there for lunch on a Friday (they are open for lunch only certain days and not until noon, so check ahead).
Being trendy, this is one of those places that use QR codes and ordering at the table. That annoys me. I know it's not a lot of work, but it's annoying to scan the code, find what you want, go through the options and order it. You also pay online (which I don't mind). My wife didn't have the Toast app, so I had to download that for her and enter her information in order to get that working for her so that she could place an order. Jeez, why do I have to all this? If you don't want to use waiters to take the order, why not just have people come up to the counter and take their order (yes, this was an option, but it makes you feel like you are old and feeble and judged).
Somehow my wife ordered her hamburger without cheese, but couldn't figure out how to get it back into the order. She has even less tolerance for this sort of thing, so she gave up the cheese.
We both ordered the single patty Dream Burger, which is described as "Smashed patty, American cheese, special sauce, garlic dill pickles, griddled and raw onions." In other words, a glorified Big Mac. Both of our opinions were that it was OK, but not really different than what you would get at Smash Burger, except that it was $11 (each). On the other hand, the Fries ($7) were excellent. The fries had a great texture, a unique taste, and were big enough to easily split between two people.
Speaking of trendy, Nouvelle adds an automatic 10 percent service charge. I am happy that it's not the standard 21 or 22 percent, but wonder why they don't just do it at 15%. Of course, I'd be happiest if they just raised their prices 15% and did away with tips all together. So it's that "What do I do?" scenario, which is also annoying. The answer for me is that I added a 5% tip to their mandatory 10 percent. I think this is more than fair, since the only service was bringing us the food -- pop refills, getting plates silverware, water, and ketchup were on us, as was ordering and paying the bill -- and we bussed our own table. Look. If you aren't going to have service, don't charge for it. If you aren't paying enough to your workers, raise your prices. If your menu prices are too expensive, they are too expensive, no matter how you try to hide it. The market will tell you if your total price is out of line.
I'm giving this place a four-star rating because I really liked the French Fries and the burgers were OK. They lose the last star based value and lack of service (but only because they charged for it anyway). I know this is the new restaurant model, but I don't want to play along. To butcher Taylor Swift, "I've seen this film before and I didn't like the ending."