Lunch Like A Local: WUBurger In Woburn

WOBURN, MA -- If you want a good -- no, make that great -- burger these days, it usually means going to a higher end restaurant where burgers are listed as "entrees" and prepared by a "chef" instead of a cook. And they have the double-digit price tags to prove it. On the opposite end of the scale you have your fast food chains and their burgers that sometimes taste sort of like beef. The middle-of the road burger, that burger that is better than the one passed through a drive-through window but less pretentious than a restaurant burger is usually a frozen patty thrown on a flat top with little more love than an obligatory shake of salt and pepper.

Enter WUBurger at 880 Main Street in Woburn for people who want a good burger without having to wait for a hostess to seat them. The restaurant has the feel of a 1950s drive in and the burgers taste the way we imagine the burgers at the original McDonald's must have tasted like when people lined up for hours and before Roy Kroch turned it into a corporation.

WUBurger uses simple, locally-sourced and fresh ingredients, and everything on the menu is made from scratch. That's the secret -- no fancy truffle infusions, and no "meat flavoring" developed in a lab off an interstate in New Jersey. You can't get them Animal Style, but if you're a fan of the West Coast's In-N-Out Burger, a double WUBurger with Wu sauce is as close as you're going to get to the iconic chain in terms of taste without booking a flight to California.

There was a short-lived, full-service version of WuBurger in Cambridge's Inman Square, but that closed after six months of operation in 2016. The original Woburn location, however, has been going strong since it opened in 2015 and is open daily from 11 am to 9 pm. The restaurant accepts online -- but no telephone orders -- but the true WU experience involves eating-in in the recently-renovated dining room.

Lunch Like A Local is an occasional series exploring unique, one-of-a-kind and locally-owned eateries. To nominate a restaurant, email dave.copeland@patch.com.

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Photo by Dave Copeland/Patch.

Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).