Char Bar 7

Located at 3724 Lawndale Drive in Greensboro, Char Bar 7 offers salads, sandwiches, burgers, and entrees for lunch and dinner. There is a full bar, and daily drink specials are available.

With other locations in Charlotte, Asheville, and Matthews, Char Bar 7 may soon be a familiar name statewide. But if the Greensboro location is anything to go by, this may be a case where familiarity breeds contempt.

Housed at the end of a shopping plaza, Char Bar 7 is spacious and stylish but devoid of much charm. Inside this upscale sports bar, you will find plenty of televisions and a surprisingly manageable noise level (even the requisite bass thudding in the background wasn’t too obtrusive) but a lack of a person touch. Some establishments remind you of home or of an exotic locale; Char Bar 7 calls to mind a focus group.

After being seated by a bored-looking hostess, it took several minutes of awkwardly sitting around for a waitress to notice us. Fortunately, the server we did end up with, Christine (or was it Christina?), proved to be upbeat and provided helpful answers to a few questions. Char Bar 7’s menu, while limited, had plenty of appeal: everything from steaks and ribs to mahi tacos and shortrib risotto. Burgers called the loudest though, and so we opted for a Texas brisket burger (cheddar, onion rings, and sauce), a CB7 (blue cheese slaw, bacon, Swiss, and sauce on a pretzel roll), and an order of hot pretzels to start.

The food proved to be a largely underwhelming experience. Though our app came quickly and the pretzels were satisfyingly fresh and hot, there were a mere medium-sized two of them for $4.65, accompanied by an unpleasantly processed-tasting queso. The wait for the burgers was substantially longer, but that can be perhaps chalked up to a large group that came in after us rather than a slow kitchen. Still, the results were inconsistent to say the least. The meat seemed to be of good quality and it paired well with the sauce but it had little flavor in and of itself. The same could be said for the fries: they were hot and crisp, but they desperately needed salt. The pretzel bun on the CB7 burger, however, was a limp and chewy disappointment. At $10+ per, the burgers here need to be a lot more impressive to compete, especially in this town.

To say that there is no compelling reason for CB7’s existence would be an overstatement: it’s cleaner and shinier than a neighborhood sports bar, and its menu is well-suited to its concept. However, poor bang for the buck coupled with mediocre food do give plenty of incentive to turn elsewhere.

6/10