Road Tips

Charcoal Grill - Racine, WI

I've written about the Charcoal Grill once before (see that entry here), but it had to do with having the surprisingly good pizza rather than having anything grilled during that visit.  I've had their burgers before at Summerfest, but have never tried one inside one of their eight locations throughout Southeastern Wisconsin.  I happened to be driving by the Racine West location recently just after the noon hour and decided to double back and go have a burger.  (see map)

The origins of The Charcoal Grill go back to the early 90's in Racine.  Dr. Constantine George, a local orthopedic surgeon, owned a restaurant in Racine that wasn't doing well.  He brought in a friend of his son, Jeff Marsh, to try and turn things around.  Marsh, who had a degree in hotel and restaurant management, took over the restaurant but was sort of floundering until one day he came up with a concept to change the restaurant into one that featured food that was cooked over charcoal. "It seemed like everyone in Racine had a Weber Grill," Marsh explained. To him, it seemed like a natural fit to transform the restaurant into a new concept.

Marsh turned that restaurant into the original Charcoal Grill restaurant in 1993. The concept immediately took off and a year later a second Charcoal Grill restaurant was opened in Kenosha. In 1995, Marsh's longtime friend, and the son of Dr. George, Paul George, came into the company. Paul George was developing a chain of vision clinics across the state of Wisconsin and took over the George family's stake in the company with the death of Dr. George in 1996. In addition to running Wisconsin Vision, Paul George is the CEO of Char Grill, Inc., with Jeff Marsh serving as President.

The Racine West location looks like it was formerly a Mexican restaurant - quite possibly a Chi Chi's - with sort of a Spanish mission theme to the outside architecture of the place.  That seems to be the "m.o." for Charcoal Grill restaurants - find existing restaurants that have gone out of business and transform them into a new location.  It makes perfect business sense and there's little remodeling that you have to do to get a new restaurant up and running.

 
The interior of the Charcoal Grill on the west side of Racine is open and airy, and has a distinctive sports bar theme to the place.  There's a large bar area with sort of an atrium feel to the left as you walk in.  With a lot of windows throughout the restaurant, you didn't need much lighting during the daytime, even on a cloudy day. 

Toward the back of the restaurant is their wood-fire oven for cooking pizzas and their rotisserie for Charcoal Grill's somewhat famous chicken.  The pizza prep area is out in the open and you can easily watch the pizza chefs prepare the pizzas and cook them in the oven.  As I said in my earlier post on the Charcoal Grill location on the west side of Milwaukee, their pizza is surprisingly good. 

I took a seat at the large, rectangular bar and was given a menu by the bartender.  They had a number of burgers to choose from on the menu including buffalo burgers, turkey burgers, a new burger called the "Crabby Louie" that features crab meat and avocado on top, a "Black and Bleu" burger with Cajun spices, crumbled bleu cheese and bacon, and their famous Wisconsin Cheddarhead burger with ample amounts of cheddar cheese on top of a burger served on an English muffin.  They also have a breakfast burger called the "Egg-licious".  It's a burger topped with American cheese, bacon, a fried egg and served on an English muffin, as well.  That almost made me jump out of my seat.  

But I've been on kind of a mushroom-Swiss cheeseburger kick lately and I decided to give Charcoal Grill's version a try.  I had my choice of either waffle fries, kettle chips or onion straws to go along with it.  I opted for the onion straws - I'm a sucker for good onion straws.  

 
And they didn't hold back on the number of onion straws they brought out with the burger.   The burger, itself, was nestled on an egg bun that was slightly toasted.  A fresh sliced onion and a number of kosher dill pickle slices were hiding the cheese and mushrooms.  There's a "fixin's" bar at Charcoal Grill where you can add a few more things like tomatoes, lettuce and jalapenos, but nothing looked that great as to where I wanted to add it to the burger.

The 1/2 pound patty was cooked medium and it was still juicy and flavorful.  Very good, as a matter of fact.  The mushrooms tasted good and the Swiss cheese was a nice complement, but didn't overpower the taste of the burger.  As I said, I've had the Charcoal Grill burger at Summerfest in the past and I didn't think it was all that great.  They seem to overcook them at Summerfest, then let the burgers sit in a tray until they're ordered up.  This one, however, was nothing like the ones at Summerfest.  It pleasantly surprised me as to the overall taste of their burger. 

OK, so I know now to just skip the Charcoal Grill burger at Summerfest (I like Major Goolsby's much better, anyhow) and that I can get a good burger at one of their locations in the Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha area.  I can't call it one of the best burgers in the great Milwaukee area, but they can hold their own against some of the more established and well-known places in the area.  It's very good if you're in a pinch and need to get an above-average burger if you're close to one in Southeast Wisconsin. 

Wells Brothers Restaurant - Racine, WI

Wells Brothers Restaurant is one of those old time pizza places that I just love to find. The business has been around for nearly 90 years and third generation family members continue to run the restaurant today. For years, Wells Brothers has been getting awards and recognition for their pizza - an ultra-thin cornmeal crust pizza topped with fresh toppings with caramelized cheese edges. In 2005, they were named as having the sixth best pizza in the U.S. in the book "Everybody Loves Pizza"; and in 2006, USA Today gave Wells Brothers more recognition in an article featuring the top ten pizza places in the U.S. I visited a dealer in nearby Kenosha one afternoon, then decided to stop into Wells Brothers for a pizza on my way up the road to an overnight stay in Milwaukee.

There were five Wells brothers in Racine in the early 1900's - one ran the Wells Brothers supermarket, one ran the Wells Brothers shoe store, another ran the Wells Brothers barber shop, while brothers James and Dominic ran the Wells Brothers restaurant. The restaurant first opened in 1921 and served Italian and American food from recipes passed down from family members over the years. In fact, the restaurant is still housed in the original building that James and Dominic bought to open their restaurant. The building has survived two fires in the mid-to-late 70's that completely gutted the building.

In the 1940's, James Wells began to serve what was called a "tomato pie", the forerunner of the modern day pizza. The dough was passed through an industrial roller giving it a very thin crust. The same roller and the original gas-fired pizza ovens are still in existence in Wells Brothers kitchen today.

After James Wells died in 1944, his sons Tony and Guy took over the business. They ran it for 55 years before passing the reins on to Guy's daughter Paula and her cousin, Bill Rivers, whose mother was the sister of Tony and Guy. Tony and Guy are still around, coming in on a daily basis to check up on things and to kibbutz with the loyal patrons. Not much has changed over the years at Wells Brothers. Well, that is, except for the neighborhood.

The area surrounding Wells Brothers at the corner of 22nd and Mead in Racine (see map) has slowly fallen into decay. The most apt description of the neighborhood could be simply stated as "The 'hood". But there is a lighted parking lot across the street to the south of the restaurant. And to keep the local riff-raff and ne'er-do-wells from upsetting their customers, Wells Brothers hires a uniformed Racine County deputy sheriff to stand watch outside during business hours. They're open Tuesday thru Saturday from 11 a.m. to 8:45 p.m. Wells brothers also closes each summer for two weeks to allow their employees some time off.

I parked in the nearly full lot across the street from Wells Brothers and walked toward the front door. The deputy sheriff standing guard was talking with a gentleman who had parked a vintage 60's car on the street next to Wells Brothers. I walked into the restaurant, through the packed bar area up front and around to the dining area in the back. It, too, was full of people with a small line of people waiting for a table to open up. I went back to the bar and took the last open chair between a couple that was finishing up a large pizza and a guy who had just ordered a pizza to go.

The bar area wasn't all that big but they did have a lot of beer on tap, as well as a number of coolers full of bottled beer. The bartender gave me a menu and put down a coaster in front of me, then he walked away. He didn't even take my beer order, which I needed so desperately at that point in the day. After a couple minutes I finally got his attention. He sort of shook his head and said, "I'm sorry, man. I got distracted and left you hangin'. What can I get you?"

I ordered a cold Miller High Life - hey, when in Wisconsin, especially the Milwaukee area, support the local brewery.

While the menu at Wells Brothers features items such as pasta and a Friday night fish fry, pizza is the king at the restaurant. Although, I will say that I was almost tempted to try their "Sicilian Steak Bomber" sandwich that a couple guys two seats down from my left got. It was basically Wells Brothers interpretation of a Chicago-style Italian sandwich, only much bigger and it smelled heavenly. When I was ready to order, the bartender had a waitress come over to get my order. I ordered a small (10") sausage, pepperoni and mushroom - my staple reference pizza.

In the meantime, the waitress brought the pizza-to-go for the guy next to me and the couple had gotten what was left of their pizza boxed up and they were getting ready to take off. It cleared up a lot of room around me and by the time my pizza showed up there were only about seven people at the bar. People come early at Wells Brothers and when it gets to be 8 p.m., the place sort of starts to wind down for the day.

Being that the pizza is so thin, it was less than 15 minutes from the time I placed my order to the time it showed up to me at the bar. Cut into party-cut squares, it sort of looked a little over-cooked with heavily caramelized edges. But from the first bite, I knew it was perfectly cooked.

Oh, man. Was it good. The sausage was fresh and had a nice tangy kick to it, the mushrooms were also fresh and not out of a can like some other pizza joints will do, and the pepperoni was plentiful across the top of the pizza. I'm not big on corn meal crust for pizza, but this crust was actually pretty good. The crust wasn't crisp, nor was it mushy. I was overly impressed with this pizza. I have to say it was truly one of the best thin crust pizzas I've ever tried.

I easily finished up the pizza and got the bill from the waitress. I had three beers that evening, but the bartender only charged me for two. "That first one was on the house," he said, apologizing once again for not taking my order right away as I sat down.

With the tip and a couple beers, my meal at Wells Brothers came to $20 bucks and change. It was everything I hoped for since first learning about Wells Brothers from various places on line and in print. The pizza was outstanding and very worthy of the multitudes of praise it has received over the years. If there was just some way to get the Wells family to move their pizza ovens to the Quad Cities, then life would be great.