Cowbell Scarborough

Thanks Josh and Chloe for accommodating a last minute, 18 top, on a holiday! Best wishes for a happy, kind new year ✨️

The fries were on point. Past that it was very disappointing at the Scarborough location. There was much that went wrong, but I'll stick to the highlights. My wife and I are always exploring for new burger joints. Whenever we patronize a new one, for us, we go with a middle of the road burger. If they can get that right, then the gourmet burgers on our subsequent trips will probably be good. With that in mind, we ordered the Prime Rib burger (med rare) which, according to legend, comes with meat, swiss cheese, carmelized onions, horse radish aoli, lettuce, and tomato. Unfortanetly, this simple test was failed not once, not twice, but three times in one visit. The story: After ordering, the burger soon arrived, but the first bite made it painfully obvious that the "med rare burger" was gray all the way through. The lettuce was a roughly 1"x2" piece of romaine, and the tomato was the diameter of a silver dollar and mostly inedible inner core. "Oh well," we said, "it's only a burger, let's not make it an issue." On our second bite we both realized that there were no carmalized onions. We attracted the manager's attention, she offered a fresh burger which was at our table in short order. Unfortunately, it was again sans the onions, and again with the meager tomato and lettuce and well-done. This absence of the onions would have been obvious to even a casual observer because the burger was delivered open-faced, but the manager wisked away before even assuring that it was correct or we could point out the repeated omission. We drew her attention, again. This time she was obviously exasperrated with the situation and took this second burger back to the kitchen I'd like to say that the third time was a charm, but sadly, no. She shortly returned with the same over-cooked burger which now had some steaming, lava-hot, onions slapped on half of the patty, and with meager vegetables. She, again, disappeared before assuring that we were satisfied. But we decided to cut our losses, eat the burger, and get out of dodge. Even if the over-cooking and less than adequate condiments are over-looked I'd rate this burger just slightly lower than a Five Guys burger. Other minor, but noteworthy, infractions: -service was frantic and sparse (It started when we were told that only high tops were available because trivia night would start an hour after we arrived and tables are reserved for trivia. Honestly? You're not going to get a table served and bussed from two burgers and beers in less than 60 minutes?*They did finally honor our request for a table after I suggested to my wife that we could find another place to eat.) -out of Sam Adams Boston Lager (Seriously? Out of SA's flagship beer at a New England burger bar at 6:00 on trivia night? Unforgiveable.) -bourbon onion rings inconsistent cut and fry (I drink by bourbon neat and I couldn't detect a hint of it in those rings. Maybe a bottle of Wild Turkey (80 proof, not the good 101), was next to the frier, but I don't think it even winked at the onions. -still in a slight state of disbelief that no discount was offered for an order that was returned twice for missing a key ingredient. Definitely won't return and will warn others away.