When the Comcast/Ed Snider people decided to knock down the Spectrum, they decided to build a big entertainment complex with restaurants and arcades and all sorts of cool stuff. What they ended up building was a bunch of shitty pseudo-restaurants, one steak house and a giant tv with a communal area in the middle to get your bro on.

I avoided this place like the plague. The place has been there for quite awhile and I managed to not step foot in the bro-fest. However, after a fun afternoon watching college hockey with some friends at the Wells Fargo Center, we ended up there. The first tip off that something was amiss? They were pumping the place with fake smoke to make it spooky, which made it look like there was a low grade fire somewhere in the building. Just what I’m looking for when I want to eat and drink: asphyxiation. We waded our way thru the masses of people and the workers, who all looked like they had never seen customers before, which was odd. The place was packed with Penn State fans of all ages, because the hockey game was a special Penn State hockey game at the WFC. They were a pretty jolly bunch and were all ready to watch the Penn State-Ohio State football game. Except they only were going to show it in one small area of the building. Way to play to the crowd, Xfinity Live.

We wandered into The Broad Street Bullies Pub and it was a zoo. Bros were watching the Flyers and people were running around in costume, it was a mess. Is it a pub & restaurant, or is it a bro bar? They sat us down quickly and, after kicking squatters off the table, our waitress came over, slid menus at us and walked away. At this point there is nothing on the round table for the 4 of us: no utensils, condiments, coasters, drinks, nothing. The waitress came back in a minute to take our order and, of course, we weren’t ready. After awhile she returned, took our drink orders, then after a long time, our food orders and then we waaaited. I think I could have grown my own cow waiting. Me, Pat and JBS all ordered the Pub Burger: “Jarlsberg Swiss cheese, caramelized shallots, bacon and fried egg” for $13. Sounds good right? All thier burgers are actually “two quarter pound all beef Angus patties stacked and grilled to perfection”. That is, apparently, menu-speak for “2 dry, burned pieces of crap with a really overcooked egg on a stale roll for $13”.

Let’s get down to it, shall we?

This is what $13 dollars (well, $15 because to sub for fries, it’s 2 bucks more) gets you at The Broad Street Bullies Pub. I ate like 4 fries before I took this picture. The only reason there is ketchup on my plate is because Pat’s mom turned around and grabbed the condiment caddy from the station for us. It had napkins and ketchup and stuff on it. Otherwise we would have been shit out of luck. The 2 waitresses that brought our 4 plates of food (no kidding) dropped and ran. No condiments, no utensils, no phone, no light, no motorcar.

This is the closeup of the Pub Burger. You can already see the charred edges and the melted cheese that had firmed up. Swiss isn’t a good cheese to melt and keep melted anyway. Somewhere in there, there is, and I am not kidding, a postage stamp sized piece of bacon in there. Somewhere. *Cue Fievel singing “Somewhere Out There”.

This is what a burned burger looks like. Not “char grilled” but burned. I had two of them. You know what they reminded me of? Have you ever gone to a Barbeque at someone’s house and they made burgers with nothing in them, just meat? No salt, no pepper, no onion, no nothing, and then they bragged for like 3 hours about how amazing they are on the grill? And then they burn the ever living shit out of everything, so that you have to cover all the food in some kind of condiment in order to be polite and choke down the free food? This is EXACTLY that, EXCEPT I PAID 13 GODDAMN DOLLARS FOR IT.

This thing was cooked within an inch of it’s life. The reason why this burger was so dry and compact is most probably because they worked the meat too much (plus, ya know, not seasoning it or putting in anything else, like a fucking rookie burger maker). Did you know there is an egg on it too? That’s the brown floppy thing hanging off the side. I don’t like eggs this brown by themselves, nevertheless on a burger. The purpose of an egg on a burger is that the yolk breaks and mixes with the flavors of the meat and cheese. The only thing the yolk on this egg is breaking is my tooth.

Oh! And even more awesome? The bun was stale. As stale as what? I don’t know. But when you bite into, or pick up, a bun, it shouldn’t break into 8 pieces.

Here, let me show you a better angle of this crap. Yes, I get that there is no filler in this burger. There is also no flavor, no moisture, no taste. Nothing. NOTHING. I could have stayed home and chewed on my shoe and had a better time. (disclaimer: please don’t chew your shoe)

You should never be able to pick up a burger and threaten to put a dent in a table with it. Never. Ever.

Now, somewhere in the above verbiage, I mentioned that this place was super busy. I always have pity on a place when they are super slammed and can’t keep it together *if the place is new*. This place is directly across from the WFC, the Linc and Citizen’s Bank Park. It’s always super busy. Always. This should be a walk in the park if you work there. And the kitchen should be used to being slammed during games (the Flyers were on as well). There is no excuse for service and food this amazingly shitty.

This food was so bad, that I have 3 others things in the queue to write about, but I pushed this to the front of the line because I was that angry about it. Horrible, Shitty. Worst thing I have eaten this year. HORRENDOUS. Burgers are not hard to make.

Shame on the kitchen staff, the servers, Ed Snider, The Flyers and whoever made the choice to put Fred Shero on the front of the menu. What a way to disrespect that man.

I don’t even know how to end this post except to say “THAT SUCKED”.