French Fry Diary 314: Doghouse Burgers & Fries

I heard about Doghouse Burgers & Fries from friends. The Doghouse is located in the Voorhees Town Center, formerly the Echelon Mall. Wow. I used to work at the Echelon Mall as a teenager, and let me tell you, the only things that are the same are the location, the escalators, and the Salvation Army lady incessantly ringing her bell. I do not miss holiday retail.

Doghouse is actually outside of the mall proper, or what used to be the mall proper. It has a variety of burgers and hot dogs as well as French fries. I got a burger combo with an order of the Cajun fries, mostly because an order of regular fries was unavailable. Other types included salt and pepper, garlic and parsley, sweet potato, bacon cheese, chili cheese, and onion straws.

It's an order and sit down and wait place. The wait was long enough for me to get a good long look at the place. Very very orange, with three folks behind the counter, and a large holiday shopping lunch crowd. They were doing good business so I don't blame them for the wait.

The burger was chargrilled and perfect, but the fries while hot and a good portion were only okay. They were regular cut natural cuts, and might have been good had they just been plain. They were tossed with some spices, nothing too hot, but enough to leave an aftertaste. I didn't finish them. I think that says a lot.

The onion straws are nothing of the kind. They are out and out onion rings, big thick crunchy ones with panko bread crumb covering. Easily the best onion rings I've had in a while. These were just luscious.

On this later visit, when we got the onion 'straws', we also got a couple other kinds of fries. the salt and pepper fries, which were pretty much plain fries, with really not that much pepper and far too much salt. The garlic and parsley fries weren't bad, if you like garlic, which I do, but it's a lot of garlic. And we also got the sweet potato fries, which is why the place was recommended to me in the first place. They were rippled potato wedges, and above average, very sweet and tasty. Not better than Cool Dog Café, but still they were very good.

I'll definitely be back for the burgers, and the onion rings, but not so much for the fries. I think this is a life lesson. If you're going to subtitle your restaurant "burgers and fries," they'd better be your two strongest menu items. At Doghouse, it's one out of two, not counting misnomer onion straws.