A hamburger can be a pretty simple food: all you need is some ground meat, a bun, and a grill. However, you can take hamburgers to the next level by using high-quality meat, adding a nice blend of spices to the mix, topping the patty with a perfect blend of ingredients, and putting it all together on a homemade bun. Finding a burger in Gastonia, North Carolina, is easy, but if you want something better than the usual fast food joint you should head over to one of the local spots on this list.
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Peace N Hominy Q
Peace N Hominy Q is on Catawba Street in Belmont, just a short drive south of Wilkinson Boulevard. It’s an old-fashioned Carolina barbecue restaurant that smokes its own meats using a house-made sauce. It’s a great place to get pulled pork and beef brisket, but they also offer hand-pattied burgers and hot dogs. You can get yours American style, Carolina style, or with chili and cheese. Their signature burger is the Big Butt Burger, a beef patty topped with pulled pork, bacon, American cheese, onions, and the house-special barbecue sauce.
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Hwy 55 Burgers, Shakes, and Fries
Despite the name, you’ll find the Hwy 55 in Gastonia in Franklin Square between I-85 and US-74. Hwy 55 is a popular North Carolina franchise diner, and although it’s expanding outwards you’ll still find most of its locations in the state. At Hwy 55, the burgers are the stars, which is why they make a point of hand-pattying each one and never freezing the meat. They offer options like the Carolina Classic topped with onions, chili, and slaw, or you can have one covered in bacon and pimento cheese.
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Grille Works Food and Drink
Grille Works is a local spot down on South New Hope Street. They offer a nice blend of American diner food like potato skins, Caesar salad, onion soup, and fish tacos, plus they have some Italian classics like hot subs, pasta, and bruschetta. For burgers they offer both a basic half-pound beef patty and a black-bean veggie patty as a vegan alternative. You can top it however you like, or you can try one of their burger specials like the Southern with chili and slaw, the Smoked with mushrooms and gouda, or the Brunch with fried eggs.
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Balls Grill and Produce
Balls Grill and Produce is a local diner down on South York Road near the edge of town. It’s a very old-fashioned place, but you can see from the clean interior that the owners still care about giving their customers the best experience they can. Like the name says, you can buy fresh produce from their store, and they also have a simple menu full of options like hot dogs, salads, and some surprisingly awesome burgers.
Gastonia has no shortage of fast-food burger joints, same as any other city. However, if you look hard enough, you’ll find some great places to eat burgers that put those fast-food patties to shame.
Image by Gerry Dincher via Flickr | CC BY-SA 2.0 | Cropped from original
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