On Valentine’s Day this year (yeah, so I’m a little late posting this…), I decided I would treat my boyfriend to lunch since I knew he was going to buy all of the ingredients to make a steak dinner at home that night. A bit burned out on our usual lunch spots, I was excited to see that Charcoal’s Gourmet Burger Bar was celebrating their grand opening that day. And considering my boyfriend is the cheeseburger aficionado of the century, I knew this suggestion would be well received.

Charcoal’s has two floors – the first is designed for quick counter service and the second floor is meant for table service. We waited in line and ordered downstairs since I was on a one-hour lunch break from work and we were pressed for time. Our order number was called quickly; a beef burger with cheese, lettuce pickles, tomato, and onion with sweet potato tater tots for my valentine and a shrimp burger with basil aioli and arugula with fresh cut fresh fries for me.

Charcoal’s grinds all of their meats in-house and their beef is a blend of different cuts of meat, depending on what they have. They have an assortment of other meat choices, including bison, salmon, shrimp, antelope, elk, venison, and turkey. Veggie is also available but I urge you to try the seafood and meat options if you can.

The shrimp burger I loved. Instead of chopping the shrimp in pieces and using a lot of extra ingredients to bind it together, Charcoal’s grinds their shrimp to create a patty that tastes like you’re eating one huge, flat shrimp. The consistency was pleasant, albeit a bit unusual, and the addition of peppery arugula and basil aioli added complimentary freshness and bite. The fries were great — hand-cut, fried crispy but not greasy — and plentiful. The up-charge on the fries was worth it in taste and volume… can’t exactly say the same for the sweet potato tater tots.

The beef cheeseburger my boyfriend got was picturesque (see header picture), with cascading melted cheddar cheese, thick-sliced pickles, shaved sweet white onion, round ripe tomato, and a pillow soft bun spread with bright white mayonnaise. He liked it a lot but had some complaints about the size for the price. Here’s the breakdown:

Start with an $8 burger (which is already a hefty price) then charge $2 for cheese (any cheese), tack on an extra .25 for every add-on you get beyond the first three, THEN add $3.50 to get sweet potato tater tots instead of chips and all of a sudden your $8 burger turns into a meal that will cost you well over 12 bucks. Granted my boyfriend is a bottomless pit, the burger could have been slightly larger for the price — had we decided to split it, we both would have left hungry.

Ingredient quality and house-made bread will inevitably cost you extra, we all know that, but the choice is yours. For now, I’m gonna stick to the shrimp burger and some of the other specialty meats that sets Charcoal’s apart. But for a beef burger with cheese and all the other fixin’s, I think there are some other places (like here and here) that have great burgers for less dough. Still, check out Charcoal’s, they’ve definitely got a unique thing going on.

The second floor dining room

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