Do your ears perk up when someone recommends a restaurant, shop, or service with the description, "High quality with great value?” I'll confess that gets me every time. I'm a sucker for a great deal and have lived long enough that I don’t settle for less than above average, especially when it comes to eating out. If you're a fan of a consistently AWESOME place to eat with fresh food, a streamlined menu, and exceptionally great value for a high-quality product, eat at Rocklin’s Freds Burger!
New To Rocklin and Already Tried and True
I love a good backstory, and Fred's Burger has one. From what I've learned, the original Fred's Burger is on Stockton Blvd in Sacramento and was started by a guy with the name (wait for it) FRED. Fred has a history of 20 years in the restaurant industry and is a hamburger fan. He couldn't find any sold that were as good as the ones he made, so he opened a restaurant specializing in great hamburgers. Well, Fred hit it out of the park because even in today's competitive market, Fred's Burger has expanded. Fred's Burger is now in San Jose, Fairfield, Sacramento, and Rocklin. It's easy to see Fred's recipe for deliciously, on-point success is to do a few things really well rather than spread out to do a ton of things in a half-baked way. It looks like the only change to the original Freg’s Burger menu is the addition of a chicken sandwich and veggie patty option. So now let's talk about the menu.
Always Hot and Even Hotter
Fred's Burger menu consists of five items, each with some additions to equal a total of fifteen items. Okay, I'll show my math here. There are five categories of items: burgers, sandwiches, hot dogs, fries, and milkshakes. There’s a hamburger, cheeseburger, double cheeseburger, and veggie burger in the burger category. The sandwiches are both chicken (grilled or crispy). In the hot dog category, there's a hot dog and wild dog. In the fries selection are fries (I guess that was stating the obvious), cheese fries, and wild fries. To be clear, this doesn't mean that the un-wild fries are factory-raised and the wild fries are harvested somewhere in the Mohave Desert. These fries are topped with cheese, freshly grilled onions, and the Fred’s Burger spicy house sauce. Sorry to disappoint, but you'll have to remain on the lookout for fries raised in a desert. It’s sad but look at it as a personal best kind of challenge. Now, I have to give another detour here with a disclaimer that I didn't get to enjoy my entire milkshake because the serving sizes are huge. Had there been a desert for me to cross a couple of times, I would have made room for my whole milkshake but there was no way I was walking off that delicious meal before the sun went down.
So, at this point, you're probably asking, "So what can be so great about a place with five categories to offer, and how can they do it at a great price for that quality?” It comes down to the fact that Fred’s Burger excels at a few things and can provide a high quality of those few good things because it isn’t purchasing something that may not sell for a while. There's no waste. Everything at Fred’s Burger is fresh and top-of-the-line. The burger patties are a Fred’s Burger creation seasoned with house-made seasoning, the sauce is made in-house, the brioche buns are top of the line, the vegetables are fresh, the fries are the same, and the milkshakes are made with high-quality ice cream rather than a pre-mix. Everything but the milkshake is available in a "wild" version: cheese, onions, and a hotter version of the house sauce. Okay, let me say I didn’t ask if the milkshake is available in a “wild" version, so that's an assumption on my part. I might ask that next time I go in. Hey, maybe I'll start a new thing that will be as popular as bacon on ice cream or hot pepper jelly.
Read the Room
Because I couldn't try everything in one sitting, I did the next best thing. I looked around the restaurant and talked to other patrons. Okay, I want to give you a full disclosure that it's one of my favorite things to do. I love talking to others about their experiences. Anyone who travels with me will attest that I turn a one-hour excursion into a half-day production because I make friends all along the way. I can say first-hand that the grilled chicken sandwich (wild, of course), the French fries (not wild so as not to compete heavily with the sandwich, and the chocolate shake were all GREAT! As I said earlier, it was a meal big enough that the milkshake came home with me for a later date. But wow!!! Genuinely great, fresh, tasty food that reminds me of what you'd eat as a guest at someone's home.
I saw two people ordering a hamburger combo with wild fries, so I asked them what they thought of the burgers and was told they were their favorite in the area. Another person ordered a hot dog. He said he's as big of a hot dog fan as the battered chicken sandwich, so he can't call out a favorite. He also said he couldn't beat the quality of the food, even at a sit-down restaurant. I have a feeling this place has a strong following because I was there after 1 p.m., and people kept dropping in. I can't imagine what this looks like during rush hour. Oh shoot, I guess I'll have to come back to see rush hour for myself. Darn, another opportunity to eat at Fred's Burger (wink wink).
Stanford Ranch Self Storage
Rocklin is such a fun community with so many choices for shopping, eating, and recreating. It's always fun to check out a new place because, if it's here, it'll be great. As your neighborhood self-storage facility, Stanford Ranch Self Storage always looks for places to add to our "best of the best" list. We happily share that list with our customers because we want to help support other locally owned businesses and, at the same time, help our customers find places to treat themselves at the end of moving day. Stanford Ranch Self Storage is not just a storage facility; we consider ourselves a community resource for sharing positive information. Please come by and share what you want us to say about your favorite business. See you soon!
Fred's Burgers
4210 Rocklin Rd., Rocklin, CA 95677
916-747-5174
Hours of Operation: 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday; 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Sunday
https://fredsburger.com/