Egon in Stavanger – not a culinary adventure

Recently a new restaurant opened in Stavanger and that does not happen every day. This time it was a place called Egon – a part of the Egon franchise that you can read more about on http://www.egon.no . We stopped by the place on a Sunday afternoon as we wanted a quick snack – the last time we ate at Egon was actually in Tromsø (read the trip report here) – the Egon restaurants are located all over Norway and I think the Stavanger one is the largest one of them all. The places is located at the harbor in Stavanger (Vågen) so the location is perfect – another things that is nice with the location is the fact that they also have a small area outside where you enjoy your meal on nice sunny days (when that happens in Stavanger ).
The first impression of the restaurant when you enter is also quite good – they have created a theme to honor Stavanger’s history and there is a focus on our maritime, canning and oil history. But the place is also a bit confusing with tables on lots of levels and staircases in many directions. And what is up with all the steps that you have to look out for? We saw lots of people almost falling as they were not aware of a step up or down.
The menu at Egon is quite extensive and one positive thing is that it comes in many languages so I guess this place is ready for the hordes of cruise ship tourists pouring in I think the menu was available in English, German, Norwegian etc. The restaurant opens early so in this place you can enjoy both breakfast and lunch and even various buffets. I chose a crispy chicken wrap from the lunch menu costing 129 Norwegian kroner (about 20 USD) and Nikki went for the burger and that was 155 Kroner (about 25 USD). The place is very informal so you just make a note of your table number and then you head over to the cashier to order, pay for the meal and pick up your drinks. Egon is licensed to serve beer, wine etc by the way. 
The food was brought to our table after a few minutes and the first thing that Nikki noticed was that there were only like 4 onion rings served with the hamburger and lots of French fries. It also turned out that the french fries was lukewarm and were a bit on the chewy side – I guess they were not that fresh. But what was also surprising was the fact the the hamburger was also lukewarm and I’m not sure how that is possible. But at this point we were quite hungry so Nikki ate the burger and the onion rings but left the fries as a silent protest
My crispy chicken wrap was not bad at all actually. It contained chicken in some sort of soy sauce and with some vegetables and it was served with some sort of sour cream dip and together with melon. And as you can see from the photo the presentation of the dish was not bad either. It would have been good to also have some sort of salsa sauce on the side but I guess you can’t have it all. I was starving too at this point so I ate all of it
So what is the conclusion? I think Egon will make it in Stavanger. The location of the restaurant is great, the menu is large and it serves standard food that most people like (like burgers, pizza, salads etc) to eat. As the title says, this is not the place for a culinary adventure but rather a place that you stop by when you are hungry and need some food fast and you want to avoid going to the fastfood stores nearby. The prices are not that bad either – the lunch items range from 110 to 150 Kroner and burgers are from 150 to 170 kroner – not bad when you compare it to other Norwegian restaurants. Well, I’m not dying to go to Egon again but I’m pretty sure that I will end up going there again in the future
Gard
http://gardkarlsen.com – trip reports and pictures