Grill of Victory
Eureka!Burger in Redlands exclaims a tasty way with its patties and buns
By: Lynn Lieu
Wedged between two other restaurants, Eureka!Burger in Redlands—with its giant bold font and orange exclamation mark—sticks out like a brown bunny in snow. At first glance you wouldn’t even think a restaurant would fit there. Once inside, the place is clean and crisp with brown and green décor clashing with the big signature orange exclamation mark painting on the back wall—it’s borderline family-style and somewhere between a newly built brewpub minus the “brew” and the bar you would think Ken and Barbie would go to if Mattel made toy bars.
In some ways it seems like a blank page waiting to be shaped and defined; the mood is set by the crowd. Early evenings seem to be the time when most families dine at Eureka! Families’ screaming children make it seem inappropriate but when the whole dining room is filled with these families, no one seems to mind. After they clear out, the restaurant fills with a college crowd and now the place seems more like a bar than a replacement for Chuck E. Cheese’s.
Serving a variety of delicious beer on tap from local craft brewery Hanger 21 (Alt, Orange Wheat and Pale Ale) to bottled Lost Coast and Arrogant Bastard, Eureka! makes for a great replacement for a bar. But, it is still a restaurant and its specialty is burgers. Eureka! offers a range of burgers from the original (lettuce, pickles, tomato—you know the rest) to a turkey cobb and home-smoked hickory; and each comes with your choice of sides: original fries, sweet honey cinnamon potato fries, panko crusted onion rings, coleslaw or salad.
The burgers are all decent sizes paired with a side you’re sure to leave full. With the original, you can customize it to your liking adding or taking away ingredients. The turkey cobb, filled with bacon, avocado, blue cheese and a Dijon mustard dressing, is tantalizing to any palate. While the hickory’s lettuce, tomato, Monterey jack cheese, pickles and beer barbeque sauce is a heavier than the turkey cobb, it still makes for a great meal.
But just as you think you’re done, the friendly service offers you dessert. While the brownie sundae is pretty common and still a favorite, the apple bread pudding is where it’s at. Just sweet enough, the bread pudding tops off the night, clearing out the beer and burger taste and leaving a pleasant lingering flavor.
Through all it’s brown and green and its attempts at branding a giant orange exclamation mark that seems to scream, “I am common and generic,” Eureka!Burger is anything but. At the least it embodies the full culture of the community of Redlands from families to college crowds. It is a blank page. It is what you make of it. It is to your liking: hold the tomatoes, add bacon.
Eureka!Burger, 345 W. Pearl Ave. Suit 130, Redlands, (909) 335-5700; www.eurekaburger.com. 11AM-10PM.
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