Photo by Jon Anderson
The Philly Pasta-La-Vista is a new pasta dish at Mugshots Bar and Grill.
Mugshots Grill & Bar has had a presence in the Vestavia Hills City Center since 2012, but customers may have noticed some changes in the restaurant’s menu recently.
The chain removed all their Caesar salads and guacamole from the menu, changed their dessert menu, added a new pasta dish and some new entrée bowls and renamed some burgers, said Brianna Young, general manager of the Vestavia Hills location.
Customers were furious about guacamole being removed from the turkey club sandwich and replaced with mayonnaise, but several new items have been well received, Young said.
A new pasta dish called Philly Pasta-La-Vista comes with bell peppers and onions and a cheese sauce that’s different from the usual alfredo sauce, and new entrée bowls include Elise’s Wok & Roll Teriyaki Bowl (with fried chicken tenders) and Lloyd’s Loaded Cheeseburger Bowl.
On the dessert menu, Mugshots dropped the chocolate chip cookie with ice cream but added Yam Good Nachos, which are sweet potato fries cooked to order and topped with ice cream, caramel and chocolate sauce, Young said. The No. 1 selling dessert, the bread pudding bites, remained, as did the milkshakes, she said.
The signature items on the menu continue to be the burgers, Young said. One of the most popular is Cliff’s Comeback Burger, which is named after the owner of the Vestavia Hills location, Derrick Rayburn, whose middle name is Cliff, she said. It’s known for its sauce, which includes ketchup, lemon juice, horseradish, sugar, salt and pepper, she said.
Other popular burgers include the Mac Daddy Burger (a macaroni and cheese burger) and Liz’s Parm-A-Geddon (a parmesan bacon burger). Then there’s the Mugshot Challenge (a bacon cheeseburger combined with two cheeseburgers, topped with three fried pickles and onion rings and complemented with 14 ounces of fries). It costs $25, but any customer who eats it all in 12 minutes gets it for free, Young said.
“A lot of people actually do well with this,” but there are some who get sick, she said. Some people order the giant burger just because they want it but don’t do the timing challenge, she said.
Mugshots was founded in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in 2004 by Ron Savell and Chris McDonald fresh out of college. They expanded across state lines to Tuscaloosa in 2005, and the Vestavia Hills location opened in 2012 as the seventh Mugshots eatery, according to the company’s website. Savell purchased sole ownership rights of the Mugshots corporation in 2017, and there are now 22 locations listed on the company’s website.
The owner of the Vestavia Hills franchise location, Rayburn, also owns the locations in Birmingham, Fultondale, Tuscaloosa and Oxford, Young said.
The Vestavia Hills location, at 1919 Kentucky Ave. #101, can seat roughly 135 people, including 90 seats indoors and 45 on the outdoor patio, she said. Hours are 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Saturday and 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday.
For more information, visit mugshotsgrillandbar.com or call 205-824-9030.
