The restaurant itself is small and has limited seating, so the wait for a table of four ended up being 45 minutes. The hostess said we were more than welcome to wait at their bar in the back, so we made our way to the back of the restaurant. When we got there we realized that what she called a bar was just the place where the servers punched in their orders on the screens, and really it was just an open area with two chairs and a place for people to stand uncomfortably while waiting for their table. We were able to secure a few drinks here though, so at least we could pretend we were at the bar. Oddly enough, they had cans of Stroh's beer, which we ordered. The restaurant had a hippy kind of vibe, so it must be kind of like how the hipsters think the cheap beer is cool for some reason. Just like how PBR is somehow now a good beer. Profit margins on these things must be huge. After close to the estimated 45 minute wait, we got a seat at a table. The menu is small, pretty much burgers, some appetizers, and a few other things. The burgers were interesting to say the least. Nothing really normal about any of them, and they all featured toppings that seemed more at home on a vegetarian menu than a burger restaurant. We ended up ordering an appetizer, the Fork and Knife Fries, which is basically cheese fries with chili, lettuce and a herb dressing. As for the burgers, I went with the Spirit Animal. What is your spirit animal? According to my coworkers at the office, mine is a mythical creature that votes too many times in a pointless intranet poll in order to skew the results. As far as the burger named Spirit Animal, that is a burger with cream cheese, roasted poblano chilies, grilled tomatoes and tortilla dust. Ordered medium, of course. The beautiful and lovely K went with the Dirty South burger, which was a burger with smoked pork shoulder, chili, onions, slaw, cheddar and mustard. All of these toppings also had fancy names to go with them, but I gave the basics. Pretty sure that "Anson Mills Sea Island Red Pea chili" was really just fancy chili. D-Mac ordered the Bear in Heaven, which was about the most normal burger you could order, with "Switzamerican" cheese being the only odd topping. What is "Switzamerican" cheese you might ask? Apparently, it is just a slice of Swiss and a slice of American. D-Mac asked them to just use the American and they obliged. The Artist formerly known as MC got The Big House, which was a burger with cheddar, sorghum-Dijon, and caramelized shallots, although she asked to delete the shallots. The one neat thing with ordering is that they have different dipping sauces to choose from for your fries, and they come with two choices and then a cup of ketchup.
The food came out fairly quickly, with the appetizer coming shortly before the burgers. The appetizer was ok. Hard to beat fries soaked in cheese and chili grease. They weren't great though, and we left a bunch still on the plate. Not something we tend to normally do, especially when shared by four people. The burgers came out and looked pretty good, definitely different than any burgers we had tried before. The toppings made for an interesting presentation. So did these burgers taste as interesting as they looked? Yes, interesting would definitely be the word for it. My burger was almost tasteless other than the cream cheese. The burger seemed to be cooked correctly, with pink in the middle, but lacked any sort of juiciness or flavor that you would expect from a burger made of real meat, especially fresh meat like they claimed. The bun itself was something that you would get off the shelf at the grocery store for your backyard cookout. Not that that is a bad thing, but for a place that has such oddball burgers you would have expected different. Really the only juiciness came from the grilled tomato on my burger, which unfortunately overwhelmed the entire sandwich. It was honestly like they stuck a quarter pound burger patty on top of a quarter pound tomato and then squashed it to make it flat. Way too much tomato on this. The really strange thing about this burger was the only real flavor was that of the crab cakes. What's that you say? I never mentioned this burger had crab meat on it? That's because it didn't, yet somehow it had an overwhelming flavor of seafood. K let me try her burger, which was much more tasty than mine, but still had the fishy flavor to it. When I questioned it to the table, K agreed and so did D-Mac, both of theirs had the same fishiness. MC did not get the taste in hers at first, but eventually tasted it too, leading to her panicking that the meat was bad and a fear that we were all going to get food poisoning. Fortunately, as of this writing we are all still healthy, so it was just an odd taste. Honestly the best part of the whole meal was trying the dipping sauces for the fries. Luckily they had a strong enough taste to overcome the seafood flavor in our mouths.
So where does this burger stand on the hierarchy of Triangle area burgers? Well, pretty low unfortunately. Even without the mystery taste, the burger itself wasn't very good. The meat had no flavor and the toppings were overwhelming. Once you add in the alarming aftertaste, this one gets the boot, all the way down to a one and a half Angus Barn Burger rating. We almost gave it a two, but after a friend of mine at work gave me a hard time about how I rate lunch burgers I see what he is saying. I can't rate this one the same as The Burger Shop, it is just not as good. So if for some reason you want to try this place, don't ask for the catch of the day, because apparently it is in the burgers.
Chuck's Burgers
237 S Wilmington StRaleigh, NC 27601
(919) 322-0126
http://ac-restaurants.com/chucks/
