Grilled Angus Beef Cheeseburger at TheQR&B in Napa, CA

Burger Breakdown

The Visit

Rolled up to The QR&B (Restaurant and Bar) in Napa, Ca for lunch on a Friday. They don’t open until 11:30am and they are certainly punctual. I was standing at the door at 11:25am and there was no love ;-). They opened the doors promptly at 11:30am..

Service level is table service. TheQ has table service, so they sat us straight away. We had a choice of sitting inside or outside. We chose to sit outside. The weather was still nice, even though it did get a little warm by the end of our lunch. It was going to be warm in Napa, CA today.

You don't really need a reservation for this place here, specifically at lunch. It was on a Friday, and there were plenty of tables at 11:30am. In the evening it may be a different story. But, throughout the lunch, there were plenty of tables both inside and outside. They had about 2-3 servers for lunch. Don't quote me on that one.

The server checked in with us straight away and provided menus. This was a casual lunch so we were in no hurry to order. The server checked in with us a couple times before we ordered. Whether we wanted to order right away, we ordered beverages.

The restaurant is really nice. It's an L-shaped restaurant. You have the bar, the bottom of the L near the front door and parallel to the street. Then, the indoor seating area is the long edge of the L, going towards the rear of the restaurant. Then you have the patio seating at the top of the L. The restaurant is nice and clean, well-cared for. Decor is nice; modern with an Earthy twist.

So...tell me about your burgers.

At TheQR&B, there is only one burger on the menu. It is the Grilled Angus Beef Cheeseburger.

I ordered the Angus cheeseburger. I asked for it to be cooked “medium.” The cheeseburger comes with a side of fries. The default condiments are lettuce, pickles and pickled onions.

The cost of the burger? Well, the Grilled Angus Beef Cheeseburger comes with a side of fries and will cost you $24.

It may seem a bit pricey, but it was a half pound Angus patty cheeseburger. Definitely a lot of meat. 

You could get bacon or avocado added to the burger. However, it was a little pricey for a couple slices of bacon, three dollars, and fifty cents for two slices of bacon. To me, that's a little bit steep. Should be around a buck, a slice.

Let's See What We Have Here

Burger arrived at the table on a nice oval plate. The plate was absolutely filled with food. There was the cheeseburger, a generous portion of shoestring fries. Next to the burger and fries we had the lettuce, pickled onions and dill pickles.

The cheeseburger was on a toasted bun; meat, cheese, bun.

Some assembly was required. When you took the top bun off to add your condiments, the cheese was stuck on the top bun. This was an interesting way to assemble a burger. I like my cheese on the burger patty not on the bun. Perhaps they thought the condiments should be on the the bottom beneath the patty rather than on the top above the patty.

The Grilled Angus Beef Cheeseburger looked really nice on the plate. Definitely looked delicious. You can see that the bun was more of a French style roll than a standard hamburger bun. Definitely wasn't a brioche roll. It had some tooth to it. It stood up to handling.

Have you tried the bread?

The bun was toasted on a flat top, almost to the point of charring it. You can see from the photos that the edge of the buns were pretty dark, but it didn't taste burnt. They brought the toasting right at the edge. I probably would have backed it off a little bit.

The bread was nice and fresh. It was a little more than a standard hamburger bun and not like a French roll. It was somewhere in between, so I'd had a nice tooth to it. Held up through the entire cheeseburger. It was a little over-toasted. Almost burnt, but not quite.

It was a good bun. It was a good choice for that burger with all that meat. It gave it a good bread to meat ratio with that half pound Angus Patty. It certainly worked well. It wasn't a huge bun. It fit the patty well. They did a great job with bun selection.

Let's look under the hood of this baby.

There was some assembly required on the cheeseburger. The toppings were on the side. You had to assemble it yourself. Also, there were no sauces on the plate or on the burger. What they do at TheQR&B is they bring you a small carousel of three barbecue sauces, ketchup, and a Serrano chili vinegar. They had a vinegar-based barbecue sauce which had a Tabasco flavor. They had a regular barbecue sauce and then they also had a spicy barbecue sauce. All of them are pretty good. I opted for the standard barbecue sauce. I didn't want anything spicy on my burger. The produce was nice and fresh. The lettuce was nice and crunchy. They use Romaine. Not my favorite lettuce on a cheeseburger. But it was fresh. There were two small tender leaves instead of one big leathery leaf.

The cheese was nice and melty. American cheese. Nice and melty, nice and sticky. Good flavor.

I didn't check the meat patty for seasoning. I ordered it medium. It arrived over-well. It was dry. There was no juice when you squeezed on the patty or on the burger. No juice came out of the hamburger patty. It was a lean blend and overcooked. I was a little disappointed in the preparation. It tasted good, nice and beefy. However, it was just way over-cooked. I don't mind having a well-done burger. Well-done burgers can be nice and juicy, if done right. But this burger patty had no juice in it at all. There was some juice on the outside of the patty, but nothing on the inside. It was cooked on an open grill, so it did not rest in its own juices while cooking. It did have a nice smokey flavor from the open grill. The hamburger patty had a nice aroma. It was not juicy at all. It could have been. Could have pulled off the grill a minute or two earlier and it would have been okay. But they just went a little bit too far.

Uh, there was a nice layer of pepper stuck to the cheese, so they did season it with black pepper. I am assuming it was seasoned with salt. Any salt on the patty was lost with the salty brininess of the scratch-made dill pickles and the intensity of the pickled onions.

The beef had a nice grind. Even though it was overdone, it wasn't a piece of leather. It had a nice tooth to it and it was relatively edible. But I would have liked it a little juicier.

All the toppings were good. The dill pickles were good. I wasn't a big fan of the pickled onions. They used a spice in there that I'm not a fan of. It's probably like allspice or something like that. I prefer mine with just pepper and mustard seed. But this had another seasoning in there that was not my favorite.

My only complaint on the pickled onions and the dill pickles is that they didn't have much snap to them. They seemed a little over-processed. Normally, if you make a refrigerator-style pickle, the pickles will still have a little bit of a crunch to them. A little bit of snap. That's a really nice addition to a cheeseburger where your beef patty is tender and your bun is tender. You have that crisp crunch that contrasts with the bun and patty.

The pickles and the onions were a nice compliment to the burger. That nice, salty brininess added to the overall taste of the burger.

So, who are your your friends here?

The side dish on this was fries. It comes with fries. You don't have to order them extra, so the Grilled Angus Beef Cheeseburger does come with a friend. The French fries are nice shoestring potatoes. They are cooked well, nice and warm. There were no options for an alternate side dish.

For an appetiser, we ordered some fried dill pickles. Tasted great. However, they were a little greasy. I mean, they were extremely greasy. They need to work on their preparation for these things. For the fried dill pickles, the flavor was great. The briney pickles with a cornmeal batter. So they were really tasty. Although they were greasy, I ate a bunch of them. I'm gonna regret it later because there was a lot of grease on them.

It's a Wrap

Overall, it was an okay burger. I was really disappointed that it was overcooked. I ordered it medium on purpose because I know that many restaurants have a tendency to overcook. It certainly tells me that there's not a whole lot of experience in the kitchen.

The person I had lunch with ordered the same thing and his burger was overcooked as well. We both ordered it medium, but they came off the grill well done over-well.

Maybe salt the patty a little bit more. Even though the dill pickles and the pickled onions brought in some salinity, a little bit of salt in that burger would have enhanced the burger flavor a bit more.

Final words...

For the price, I think it was a little expensive. I mean, they charged a boutique price, and they did not cook it to a boutique level.

It was overcooked. It was dry, still had some flavor to it, but it certainly wasn't juicy. It wasn't "drip down your arm" juicy or "drip on the plate" juicy. It was just a burger. Kind of like what you could pick up at any national chain burger outlet. In fact, I've had a BK Whopper that was juicier than this cheeseburger. 

If they were able to cook this burger correctly, they would have knocked it out of the park.

TheQR&B needs to take a little bit more care in how they cook their meats. I'm sure their other barbecue is great. Haven't had it. Can't comment on it, but I imagine that's what they're known for.

Will I go back there and get a burger again? Probably not.