The Sacramento Bee -- sacbee.com -- An online information service of The Sacramento Bee

Sacbee: / Bee Search

Sections:

� Search Bee Archive

� Movie Listings

� TV Listings

YOU CAN CLEAN YOUR PLATE AT HARV'S

March 14, 1993
Section: SCENE
Page: D2

By Ed Murrieta Bee Staff Writer

TIME & MONEY

FOODSTUFF

--HARV'S CAR WASH

Where: 1901 L St., 448-6059

Hours: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily

In-and-out time: 40 minutes

What you'll pay: $4-$6

Recommended bites: Burgers, sandwiches

When the boss takes you to lunch at Harv's Car Wash, you can't help but think that your career is on the fast track toward food stamps. But by the time you've polished off your potato chips and wiped the last traces of chocolate milkshake from your beard, it hits you: Maybe the boss isn't such a cheapskate after all.

There we were, the boss and I, happy and well-fed at Harv's Car Wash. I still had the job, and he'd had his car washed, waxed and vacuumed while we were eating.

Harv's is more than wax jobs and undercoating. Next to the high-speed automatic washers and all the other equipment that makes your car spiffy again, is a full-service coffee shop, a regular Formica-and-fries Americana eatery, where burgers are served greasy and sandwiches come with nothing frillier than lettuce (iceberg no less!), tomato and pickles and a small bag of potato chips.

We're not talking cuisine here. This is basic lunch-counter cookin'. As lunch counters go, Harv's is up there. The food is good and the service is friendly. And you can kill time while you're waiting for your car.

Friends refused to believe the value and time savings. That is, until I took them for a noontime meal and car wash ($12.40 for a wash, wax, polish and a dose of air freshener; $14.40 gets you that, plus a white-wall treatment; and $7.95 gets you a basic wash job, no wax.) We were in and out and back to work in just over a half-hour.

Harv's fare is your basic offerings of burgers, club sandwiches, tuna salads, hot dogs, chili, a selection of sub sandwiches and a variety of breakfast dishes.

The club sandwich ($3.75) lacks the requisite turkey; it's piled high with ham, bacon, lettuce tomato and cheese, served on lightly toasted bread and presented in six bite-size pieces.

The pastrami and cheese "super sub" ($3.75) isn't bad, but it's short of super. Made with generous portions of some sort of processed pastrami loaf and American cheese slices, the sandwich is a chewy mouthful, served on a soft white roll.

Harv's also offers "diet delights," presumably so some of us can still squeeze back into the car after it's washed. The tuna salad ($3.95) seemed anything but diet, laden as it was with mayo and Thousand Island. But it's a tasty offering, twin scoops of tuna, filled with chunks of onion and pickle relish, are served atop a fresh bed of lettuce, with a side of tomato slices. Chef salad ($4.25) and chicken salad ($3.95) also are on the "diet" menu.

Having had my fill of diet dishes, my next visit to Harv's was strictly high-octane eatin': a fried bacon and egg sandwich!

At $3.95, this is a cholesterol lover's delight, two fried eggs on toasted bread with thick strips of bacon and lettuce and tomato. It bridged the breakfast-lunch gap quite well.

The cheeseburger ($2.95) - available with pastrami at no extra cost - is a solid, workaday burger, fried to a tasty finish and topped with lettuce, tomato and pickles and a not-so-secret sauce of Thousand Island dressing on a toasted bun.

Rating: * *3/4

All content © The Sacramento Bee and may not be republished without permission.
Send comments or questions to NewsLibrary


	The Bee's Archive Sign Up for NewsLibrary Account Customer Service NewsLibrary serves, maintains and supplies customer services for The Bee's fee-based archive. Please direct billing and account information inquiries to NewsLibrary. E-mail NewsLibrary Customer Service Search Tips Copyright Information Death Notices Obituaries (News) Funeral Notices

[ Sacramento Bee Web sites ]

Sacbee.com | SacTicket.com | Sacramento.com