$1* Burgers @ Bar Louie, Sandlake Road

$1 Burger with pepper-jack cheese...

The Orlando Sentinel's food critic, Heather McPherson, highlighted cheap burgers last Friday in the Calendar section. Among the great deals was Bar Louie's Tuesday night $1 burger. The * in the title is for the fact that you have to buy a drink to get the burger. We didn't know that going in and since we aren't soda drinkers or lemonade or sweet tea drinkers, we asked if we could substitute a side instead. The waitress was kind enough to ask manager and we were allowed to do that.

Bar Louie is definitely a bar, though they do have a children's menu. The atmosphere is lively with music blaring, games on at the bar, and a stage, waiting for a band. Our waitress was very helpful and gracious, especially when we had to reconsider the $1 burger deal.

The burger is a 7 oz. Angus beef patty, and it comes with shredded lettuce. You can add extra toppings like tomatoes, pickles, cheese, BBQ sauce, and others. 7 oz. is a pretty big patty; it's the same burger that is on the menu which makes this a very good deal.

The food came out in a timely manner (it was pretty busy) and it was piping hot! We all got sides instead of the required drink so our table was quite full of food. If you buy a drink or a side, it appeared that you could get as many $1 burgers as you want.

...with pickles, tomatoes, and complimentary lettuce...

...with cheddar cheese (left) and provolone (right).

The burgers were good; I got mine plain with just the lettuce. It's hard to say that they were really good; the patty was a bit tough but definitely meaty. I slathered mine in mustard, ketchup, and some of their hot sauce (really good). My beef (yuck, yuck, yuck) with the burgers is that they required sauce; in my humble opinion, good burgers don't require sauce of any kind because the beef is flavorful enough on it's own.

The regular fries; we didn't get a picture of the sweet potatoes

The fries were exception, both the sweet potato fries and the regular fries. They were smokin' hot when they came out so I knew they weren't sitting underneath a heat lamp waiting to be delivered. Bar Louie seemed to have a good system going--runners were delivering the food to the tables from the kitchen which freed up the waitresses to continue checking on customers and take orders. The sweet potato fries came with a spicy ketchup which had a great kick; I think that was jalapenos but I failed to check with waitress.

All in all, it was a good meal and I would go back. If you do the side instead of the drink, it's $4.49 for a really filling meal. If you do the cheapest drink, it's a dollar less. $1 burgers are the way to go.