Fincastles Burger - A Diner even Superman would love.

Fincastles Diner, Downtown Greensboro

So I've been wondering about this place ever since I first heard Fincastles from a friend who works downtown. It's a restaurant that tries to do a good old flashback to the fifties, a cliche'd corner diner, a teenage hangout, complete with a juke box in the corner, and the double straw milkshakes.

Opened in 2005 by Emmett and Jody Morphis, Fincastles immediately makes you feel like you've walked into a Superman comic book, the moment you enter the door. It's a brick diner with steel accenting on the lunch bar that screams of metropolis. There are however, a few clues to suggest you're still in Greensboro, like the outdoor seating or the college waitress dressed with a groovy 70's skirt and tank, anklets made from nature, and her obvious "I'm a student" demeanor. It's an eclectic restaurant with a unique staff that was more than friendly the day we showed up for an "Official Fincastle Burger."

Now here's some insider's advice. Order the onion rings said our waitress. They are down-right smashing, and surprisingly one of the best part of our meal. The fries were okay, but the onion rings are huge, deep-fried, beer-battered, homemade onion rings with a pleasant texture and taste. You're going to want to save a couple them for my next recommendation. Put one (or two) on top of your burger. See, the local's secret to the ultimate Fincastle experience is to take your burger, remove the lid, and add a couple of this ginormous onion rings to it.

The Fincastle Experience

The Fincastle burger by itself was fresh and tasty. It's made fresh with real beef. and you can even ask the cook if you can see his balls of meat, which sit in a cooler beside the grill. Upon your order, they reach in and grab one of their fresh balls of ground beef, slap it on the sizzling grill, and cook it flat with a hamburger press. No frozen hamburger patties at this place.

But the secret to any popular 50's based restaurant was the sauce. Think Big Boy's or Shoney's and their tartar sauce, or McDonald's and their Big Mac sauce. Fincastles realized they needed a proprietary sauce, that would not only make their burger patron's crave the food but also become a synonymous flagship taste of their establishment. To me it was kind of like a spicy ketchup, which isn't necessarily my forte', but for a ketchup lover it could be the answer you've been looking for. What makes it even more rebellious, is that most famous restaurants who have had "secret sauces" generally base them on mayonnaise. It's definitely a unique, and innovative flavor.

Here's the thing. I think Fincastles may really be onto something. Starting with the location on Elm street downtown, the ambiance of a retro fifties burger grill, and the fresh homemade burgers- It's definitely a winner. However there is something lacking. Something that its predecessors had, a product that instantaneously grabs you by the stomach and says "I don't care how much this costs, you're coming back." The other negative is the price. With two adults and two kids, the cost of a meal cost over $30.00 with gratuity. That's a lot of money, even for uppity Elm street. I don't mind helping a small business pay the over-priced rent of Greensboro's revitalization efforts, but to put that in perspective, when I took the whole family out to the posher Macaroni Grill over at Friendly center the week before, the grand total was only $40.00.

The Bottom Line? Expensive but unique. The food was fresh, the service was great, and it's about the only thing on Elm street giving it a go at breaking out from the norm. I'd highly recommend it at least once, and after that keep it to a maximum of ordering onion rings until the next paycheck.