Home Plates

"The place has its own personality now, and that's a good thing," he said as he picked up one of the "mini burgers" (a featured appetizer borrowed from an old Houlihan's menu) from a plate of four little cheeseburgers, all of them overcooked and ridiculously dry. The chicken quesadilla, though hefty and loaded with melted cheese, was equally unmemorable. One afternoon, I shared a plate of crunchy, hot jumbo fried shrimp with a couple of friends in the bar and enjoyed them a lot, but that sports-bar standard can't be hobbled too badly.

The less-complicated fare is the best. I liked the grilled Reuben panini, heaped with corned beef and sauerkraut and served with addictive potato chips fried in the kitchen. And the sliced filet-mignon sandwich was piled with tender meat on a soft torpedo roll along with lots of sautéed mushrooms, onions and roasted red peppers.

The oddest choice on the menu is something called the "Surf & Turf Cold Plate," a stingy array of three chilled shrimp, three bite-sized slabs of thick roast beef, six paper-thin slices of cheddar cheese and four wedges of fresh pineapple. It's not a lunch; it's a snack plate. And it needed a side order of those chips to pull it together, carbs be damned.

Ten sweets are on the dessert list, including that staple of every New York sports bar since Jack Dempsey's, New York cheesecake. Here it's called Kansas City-style cheesecake, which makes little sense -- if there's any city without a cheesecake tradition, it's this one. But one bite told the real story: It was as fluffy as a Jell-O-mix cheesecake, but gummier. And although the menu insists that the dessert is "topped with fresh strawberries," it isn't. Not that our waitress had any idea. She had to go back to the kitchen and ask before returning with this confession: "It's, uh, strawberry purée." And frozen to boot.

But who gives a damn about fresh berries when the real star of this shiny new celebriteria isn't the food? After all, no one walks out of the Hard Rock Café singing the praises of its overpriced and underwhelming cuisine. The real attraction at a Hard Rock is its signature T-shirt. George Brett's has a nice assortment of apparel, too, tucked behind the hostess station. But the place needs a much bigger retail area. Why eat at Brett's tourist trap if you can't walk out in a full uniform, embroidered with Brett's signature?