Rating: 6/10
Epic Burger opened its new restaurant in Champaign-Urbana this past weekend. The location on 1305 S. Neil St. marks Epic’s 11th restaurant after recently acquiring one of its competitors, Meatheads.
Meatheads, which had been in the community for almost 12 years, had fallen on hard times during COVID-19. The CEO of Epic Burger, David Grossman, subsequently acquired the struggling chain hoping to restore its quality.
“I have a bunch of friends who went to the U of I, a bunch of my friends’ kids are still in school at the U of I,” Grossman said. “I asked people if they went to Meatheads; they all loved it, and I just thought keeping this location and converting it to Epic would make smart sense. I knew that Epic was once a great product, and I knew that I could return it back to greatness.”
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Grossman’s strive for greatness is certainly admirable, but in practice, Epic struggled to live up to its name.
Something that Epic didn’t struggle with was presentation. The building was well-designed and clean, and customer service was helpful. When receiving our food, the first thing that stood out was its quality and freshness.
Grossman named some of the companies Epic works with to maintain a high level of quality, like Creekstone Farms for the beef and Turano Baking Company for the bread.
“Everything we use at Epic is quality,” Grossman said. “We buy from the same suppliers; it’s very consistent — our beef, our chicken, our cheese, our buns, our produce is fresh.”
However, when it came to their burgers, the high-quality ingredients were not supported due to the lack of seasoning.
For example, the Farmhouse burger contained a beef patty, fried egg, bacon, pepper jack cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickle, grilled onions and “Epic sauce” served on a toasted brioche bun.
Despite the long list of ingredients that, on paper, should work well together, when it came to taste, the lack of seasoning caused many of the flavors to not differentiate themselves from one another.
The chicken tenders shared the same fate since the tender was cooked perfectly with a nice coat of breading, yet not enough spices to back it up. But their honey mustard does a great job lifting the tender and making it a solid combo.
The fries were probably the most disappointing of the dishes. The fries were seemingly undercooked and didn’t have the crispy outside you expect from a good french fry.
The cajun fries were also heavily under-seasoned; it was hard to discern whether a fry was cajun or just regular. The sweet potato fries fell into the same fate as the rest — they were not crunchy and had basically no salt.
Something that was both well-made and delicious was the restaurant’s milkshakes. They are a lighter style of milkshake compared to your typical one, but this allows you to enjoy the taste without feeling bloated. Out of the options available, their coffee and vanilla were some of the best.
For those with dietary restrictions, Epic is the place to go. The company allows for almost endless customization and has options for almost any type of allergy.
The main issue with many items on the menu is that for the price of the food, one would expect to get their money’s worth. Epic doesn’t quite do that.
The price for a classic single-patty burger, a small order of fries and a shake turned out to be around $18. With rising costs, this certainly isn’t an egregious price, but there are restaurants in the area around the same range that provide a better product.
Not to mention that the location of Epic is farther than the average restaurant students can find on campus. If any student living on Green Street were to crave Epic, they would have to take a bus ride or walk for around 30 minutes if they couldn’t drive to the location.
Epic is certainly not a bad restaurant by any means, and with the restaurant only being open for a short period, the quality certainly has time to increase.
There’s no doubt that Epic Burger tries to serve the best burger around, but the lack of added flavor makes the location a hard bite for the price you pay.
