I found the meanest, baddest, cheapest, best burger in Mooresville

With minutes to spare before the restaurant’s daily lunchtime closing, I entered Richard’s Coffee Shop through the door on its back porch, nearly out of breath.

“I have to get me one of those Carolina-style burgers,” I told the half-dozen patrons still chatting and relaxing on the porch, below the restaurant’s huge “Welcome Home Veterans Military Museum” banner. “And a Carolina dawg for dessert.”

I made it in record time from my home at Interstate 77 Brawley School Road exit 35, despite the daily snarl that can turn the three-mile trip on a single road, and then a left turn, into a 25-minute or longer test of endurance, will and patience. Traffic stacked at lights made sure I stayed at or slightly above the changing speed limit.

“Be sure to order the chicken salad, too,” a man on the porch suggested.

Although the homemade chicken salad also is a celebrated menu item at Richard’s, I could tell he knew I would never, ever order one this day.

My look clearly conveyed that I was after the meanest, cheapest, baddest, best burger in town, piled with slaw, chili sauce, relish and onions.

The cook works for free

Robin MacKenzie, the longtime volunteer cook at Richard’s, prepared one for me just as she has for thousands of patrons since her now-deceased husband, George, recommended her for the job in 2014.

The restaurant needed a breakfast-and-lunch cook. No pay. Just a tips jar at the front counter, beside the safety lever you pull on an inoperable grenade for a complaint ticket number.

Coffee is free on Thursdays, and a music jam is held Saturdays.

“’My wife could cook,’” her husband told the volunteers who’ve always run the restaurant at the nonprofit Welcome Home Veterans Living Military Museum.

“’You’re going to put me back to work again?’” MacKenzie recalled asking her husband.

The kitchen consisted of a two-burner hot plate, a microwave and a toaster, she said.

Now, thanks to Mooresville-based hardware chain Lowe’s, the kitchen has a six-burner stove with a flat top and a double oven.

An overhead sign at the entrance to the kitchen has the Lowe’s and Richard’s Coffee Shop insignias and reads, “Robin MacKenzie Kitchen.”

I suddenly realized that MacKenzie — like the veterans of all wars who gather here for coffee, breakfast, burgers, dogs, sandwiches, stories and camaraderie each day — is a living legend, too.

A humble one.

“I have no idea what makes it taste so good,” she told me as I plowed into my messy burger and dawg, which on the menu is correctly spelled “dog.” It’s a doggone good dawg, however you spell it.

Welcome Home Veterans

I’ve visited the place off and on since Richard Warren, an Army combat pilot during the Vietnam War, opened the shop in 1995, across Main Street from its present location. Never a more good-natured, smiling guy, I remember thinking the first time we met, having expected the opposite.

Warren flew a Huey attack helicopter, or gunship, with the call sign Mustang 53. He died in 2009 from complications related to exposure to Agent Orange, according to the museum website.

Months before he died, Warren told me about the nonprofit he was forming to honor and support fellow veterans. “Welcome Home Veterans,” he said he would name it.

Every time I step inside and look at the expansive display of donated items from various wars, I’m reminded of Warren and my dad, who served in Patton’s Army across Belgium and Germany in World War II.

My dad flew into Belgium on a glider plane after parachute training at Fort Benning, Georgia, and rarely, if ever, discussed his war-time experiences with his kids. We learned about them from his comrades at reunions of his Army division at Fort Bragg.

Friday, however, my mind was only on that famous burger and dog.

‘Must be the love you put into it’

A half-dozen or so veterans were still gathered at a large table when I arrived.

“I don’t know how she makes it, but it’s very, very, very tasty,” 77-year-old Army veteran Bob Wiegand said about the Carolina-style hamburger as he hung out with veterans Bill Hord, Frank Berridge, Augie Bellino and others. “I’ve probably had 15 or 20 of them over two years.”

(That’s all? I thought. I might have had 100 if not for this thing called work that intrudes.)

Word of caution, however, to the 99.99% of Americans who, like me, assume the burger includes ketchup. No, no, no. Carolina-style means mustard. So be sure to mention to the volunteer who takes your order that mustard on a burger is heresy, and you can’t believe you have to special-order ketchup, but that’s your request. I say it with a smile, in a goofy, jokey, embarrassed sort of way because when in Rome ….

MacKenzie said she grills her third-of-a-pound burgers made with 80/20 Angus beef. Simple as that, she said.

You also can’t beat the prices: $5 for a Carolina-style hamburger or $4 for a regular one. Add $1 for cheese. Carolina-style hot dogs are $4. and regular ones $3.

The chicken salad is $5, and the costliest sandwich on the menu, a club with ham, turkey, bacon, cheese, lettuce and tomato, costs $8.

The prices include the 6.75% sales tax, Wiegand said.

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Everyone on staff is a volunteer, which helps explain the low prices, he said.

“It must be the love you put into it,” Navy veteran Berridge told MacKenzie during my visit, referring to the great taste of the burgers.

MacKenzie shrugged.

Whatever the reason, she said, “they keep eating them. So they must be good.”

Richard’s Coffee Shop at Welcome Home Veterans Military Museum

Location: 165 N. Main St., Mooresville, NC 28115.

Menu

Cuisine: American

Instagram: @richardscoffeeshop

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