What happened to Burger 21?

Over a year ago, we started picking up take-out from Burger 21.  They have gluten-free buns as well as gluten-free fries (regular and sweet potato) made in a dedicated fryer.  And if you dine in, they have a nice gluten-free cider.  Since the bright indoor lighting is rather jarring if you're sensitive to light, we went from dining in to picking up take-out fairly quickly.

However, over the last six months or so, our orders often haven't been made right.  Thankfully, my meal was still gluten-free, but the bacon we paid for was not on the burger.  This happened three consecutive times.  Finally, we complained (via phone) and the next time my husband went in, they gave him a free burger on our take-out order.  Unfortunately, even though my burger had the bacon ordered on it, it also had lots of condiments and other stuff I do not eat on burgers.  It was completely gross so we had to go back and exchange it for another burger.  We got more coupons for that mistake, but by then I was thinking I don't really care about saving on an order if the restaurant can't seem to prepare it correctly...over and over again.

Finally, another take-out order and again, it was prepared incorrectly.  But this time my husband knew to check the order BEFORE he left and sure enough, there was stuff on my burger which was not supposed to be on it...and the order taker definitely confirmed the other back correctly before sending details to the kitchen.  So, now we assume someone in the kitchen can't read the tickets....or they're snap chatting with someone or taking selfies...whatever kids do these days...lol!  Whatever the issue, they're absolutely not concentrating on getting orders prepared correctly.

Now my husband won't go back and since he's the official take-out guy at our house, I'm kind of out of luck.  By the way, Burger 21 burgers are fine and the fries are very tasty.  But the gluten-free buns and burgers at Cheeseburger Bobby's are better.  I can't have fries there due to no dedicated fryer..hence our past tendency to get burgers from Burger 21, unless I'm not in the mood for fries. 

#burger21fail

AUGUST 2019:  Just wanted to update how this location of Burger 21 is doing.  They have now been preparing our orders correctly about 75% of the time.  My husband's order has been wrong for the most part, but he can eat anything so he just deals with it.  We've almost stopped going there completely, as I'll make baked fries at home to go with Cheeseburger Bobby's burgers - they have the better burger and gf bun anyway! 

    

Best chicken fingers in the ATL!

We've been going to Bantam + Biddy for several years now.  Mostly we go to the Avalon location,  but when visiting to the HIGH Museum, we like going to the Ansley Mall location for brunch.  The owner, Shaun Doty (who also owns Chick-a-Biddy and YEAH! Burger) has been serving up gluten-free specialty items for many years now - most of which are exceptional. 

Though I'd love to be more adventurous when dining out, I'm more likely to get the same dish at a place once I know I love it, than to risk trying something unknown.  Therefore, I almost always (or at least, 95% of the time) order the fried chicken fingers at Bantam + Biddy.  The dish comes with two gf sides, plus a gf corn muffin - what's not to love?!

To explain how amazing the chicken fingers are, let me share a funny story about a lunch outing with a very good friend of mine, who does not eat gluten-free. I ordered the chicken fingers as usual, and my friend ordered the same thing. She didn't mention she needed them gluten-free - assuming there were two versions of the item.  There are not.  During the course of our meal, my friend commented on how good the chicken fingers were, which made sense to me, since many people think all gf food is either horrible or not so great. As our conversation progressed, it became clear that my friend thought she had ordered "normal" (aka not gf) chicken fingers - different than what I had. It was pretty funny, but also kind of sad, to think that someone could be so surprised that there is such a
thing as delicious gluten-free chicken fingers.

Though I'm a faithful B+B customer, I've always thought it was odd that there wasn't anything gf for dessert. Eventually I think they had macaroons (or something like that), but never anything I was interested in.  That was until my last visit last week.  To my surprise, there were cakes in the front case (Avalon location) marked gluten-free! We were on our way out and our server (who knew three in our party of 6 were gf) didn't offer us dessert. Our friends had already left before we confirmed the cakes were gluten-free so we took a piece of Butter Pecan Cake to go. It was both gluten and dairy free and the frosting was insanely delicious. The cake was fine, but it did seem dairy free - if that makes sense. The frosting didn't seem anything free - I could eat it by the spoonful!  I think the other cake they had that night was German Chocolate so I might try that another time.

Also, during the visit noted above, the chicken fingers and corn muffin were both better than I ever remember them being. My friend agreed that each item was more moist than in the past which made them even more delicious than you'd imagine.  Now the chicken fingers are among the best I've had ever - with or without gluten!

Looking forward to trying The Federal, Doty's latest venture, sometime soon! Now all we need in this area is a YEAH! Burger at the Halcyon complex....think about it, Shaun!