Red Rock Cafe Review

Red Rock Cafe
1010 Lincoln Ave
Napa, CA 94558
(707) 252-9250

Red Rock Cafe Website
Google Maps to Red Rock Cafe

Hours:
11AM to 9PM every day.

Ok, you're tired of filet mignon, roasted chicken, pate, seasonal vegetables, etc. You're really in the mood for an old-fashioned hamburger. Not a gourmet hamburger. An old-fashioned cholesterol bomb hamburger that makes sure you're FULL. If you can deal with the parking (basically 8 spots in a small circle shared by 3 businesses. Parking on the street is often easier.), you have the Red Rock. These are fairly large burgers. None of that wimpy reasonably sized stuff.

Red Rock Cafe food

Solid meat patties, a variety of cheeses, vegetables, and additional fixins, condiments, etc. My only quibble is that the bread is a bit weak. It can barely hold up to the weight of the sandwich (or maybe this a warning from the gods about eating this much food...) They should seriously consider toasting up those buns (outside and inside) to give them some heft to stand up to the burger. And then you can complement it with the typical fried side-orders of onion rings, french fries, curly-fries, etc. The side-orders are fairly large. You can probably split just one between two people. Are there better tasting burgers? Sure. You can go to a high-end restaurant and spend $14+ on their gourmet burgers, but sometimes you're in the mood for a really good, normal, heavy burger, and Red Rock is the best one in town.

There's a lot more to the Red Rock than burgers. Although that's why we primarily go, the menu is full of other diner fare like fish and chips, chicken sandwiches, etc. Also of particular note is their BBQ and offerings for catering or dinner. Sometimes, you can find them smoking it up out in the parking lot which doesn't quite seem legal. Smells great though. :)

If you're looking for a smaller burger but want to avoid the normal chain stores. Foster's Freeze (Google Maps) has a nice medium sized burger and looks like a 1950s diner. Nation's (Google Maps) has a heavy burger, but it's not in Red Rock's league. If I'm going to make the down payment on my angioplasty, I might as well go with a bang. How anybody eats for the rest of the day after going through one of these meals is beyond me.

Given the choice between Red Rock and say Taylor's Refresher, we like Taylor's better food-wise. Far better wine selection (ie, not Beringers'), and we do like the Taylor's burgers better. But Taylor's is also at least $10 more expensive and doesn't have that blue-collar "real Napa" vibe of say Red Rock and is often packed. And Red Rock has BBQ too so it just depends on what you're in the mood for.

Red Rock Cafe settings and service

Service overall is fine for a burger diner. Red Rock is more blue collar and salt of the earth than most of the restaurants on this website. It's built more for the locals than tourists. It feels more like an old bar than a restaurant. The bar probably takes up half the space of its small floor space; so, it can get crowded in a hurry. It's got that blue collar, small city vibe and customer base which some like and some don't. Wine country ambiance, it's not, but sometimes you don't want it.

Price of the meal

2 burgers, 2 sides, 1 glass of wine: $30