Restaurant falls flat despite promising concept

n Restaurant review: The ëAmerican Graffiti'-styled Blueberry Hill tries to cash in on recent retro trend.

Chris Ledermuller

Blueberry Hill is a 1950s style restaurant with an extensive menu including, ribs, pasta, pot pies and Mexican food served alongside the traditional fare of burgers, fries and onion rings. Rich cheesecakes and other coffeehouse desserts are offered side by side with traditional fountain favorites. The restaurant even looks more contemporary than something out of "American Graffiti."

Even though Blueberry Hill's concept is great, the overall dining experience is ineffective.

The large menu has a mass appeal, and anyone who dines at Blueberry Hill will find a tempting dish. The menu writing is gifted, making even a lowly hamburger sound as tempting as a slab of medium-well prime rib slow-broiled for hours and drizzled with its own warm juices and peppercorns.

The actual taste, however, is weak. The natural flavor of meat and vegetables disappears from cooking. There is not even a faint hint of salt, sugar or any other seasoning or flavoring.

Even cheesecakes loaded with fruit and nuts somehow have a bland taste. That problem appears in everything outside the realm of burgers and fries.

The burgers are decent, especially the diner's half-pound special, the Kitchen Sink. The special is a burger topped with salsa, guacamole, cheese and bacon. French fries can be smothered in cheese, chili and even gravy. A large plate of onion rings stacked like a beehive hairdo is one of Blueberry Hill's signature dishes.

The servers are friendly and attentive. They mean well even though they have the occasional slip-ups, like forgetting to put silverware on the table. Some less rational patrons might not leave a tip for that.

Blueberry Hill's décor also seems uneven. The heart and soul is a 1950s diner, but the appearance is late 1980s like the diner in "Saved by the Bell." Turquoise booths and neon lights, lithographs of '50s pop culture icons and a jukebox that plays oldies make up the visual discord.

Meals can be less than $15 at Blueberry Hill across the street from Cal State Long Beach, and it has the potential to be a magnet for the college crowd. However, the food must taste better and service must improve.

Good burgers and fries cannot redeem Blueberry Hill. Those are pedestrian items available just about everywhere. Tommy's and In & Out make cheap burgers that people would go out of the way to get. For '50s diners, Johnny Rockets also makes tasty burgers and keeps things lively with waiters singing oldies.

Blueberry Hill's advantage over Johnny Rockets and other diners is a broad menu. Creativity is not the problem. The lack of taste is. The management should consult new chefs who keep the existing menu, but overhaul the recipes with flavor.

Mixing things up is one step Blueberry Hill already took. Now it must make order out of chaos.

Chris Ledermuller is a print journalism major at Cal State Long Beach.

Blueberry Hill
5735 E. Pacific Coast
Highway
Long Beach
(562) 986-4455

3 Visa, MasterCard and American Express accepted
3  Beer and wine served

Rating is a 2 out of 5