PACIFIC BEACH \u2013 If you happen to be strolling along Garnet Avenue and stumble upon a fast food restaurant with a familiar red and yellow motif that sells quarter-pound burgers, fries, and shakes, it would be understandable if you assumed that it was a new McDonald\u2019s location.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s not. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s actually the latest Mr. Charlie\u2019s<\/a>, a burger chain that markets itself<\/a> as \u201ca vegan McDonald\u2019s.\u201d The franchise, which has restaurants in Hollywood, San Francisco, and Sydney, Australia, launched its Pacific Beach location with a grand opening on Feb. 7.<\/p>\n The restaurant isn\u2019t in any way affiliated with McDonald\u2019s, but its menu contains twists on standard McDonald\u2019s items, such as the Mr. Royale With Cheese, which is a plant-based quarter-pound burger, the Not Chicken Nuggets, plant-based nuggets that taste like chicken, and the Mr. Frowny\u2019s, a plant burger, fries, and drink combo that\u2019s the equivalent of a McD\u2019s Happy Meal.<\/p>\n Customers at the restaurant on a recent Saturday afternoon said that the food tastes remarkably similar to McDonald\u2019s.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m vegan, and there aren\u2019t very many fast food options, so this is amazing,\u201d Pacific Beach resident Brian Hersman said. It was his second visit to the restaurant since it opened. <\/p>\n \u201cI tried the Not a Cheeseburger the first time, and having not had McDonald\u2019s in a long time, it tasted almost identical. I think it\u2019s amazing that there are options like this for quick, vegan, flavorful meals.\u201d<\/p>\n Hersman became a vegetarian four years ago for health reasons, and then went fully vegan a year ago.<\/p>\n After trying the Not a Cheeseburger, another customer, Ocean Beach resident Keren Peres, agreed that the restaurant\u2019s food tastes very similar to McDonald\u2019s.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never had a cheeseburger, actually, because I\u2019ve been vegan for many years. I wanted to try the cheeseburger, and it was fantastic,\u201d she said. \u201cIt reminded me of the McDonald\u2019s hamburger that I used to eat when I was a kid.<\/p>\n \u201cI haven\u2019t had a McDonald\u2019s burger for 40, 50 years, but it\u2019s just as I remembered; it was very similar; it was almost scary,\u201d she added. \u201cWhen I was eating it, I almost felt like \u2018are we sure that this is plant-based and not meat,\u2019 because it felt so much like what I remembered.\u201d<\/p>\n She gave the restaurant high marks.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a tough grader because I\u2019ve eaten a lot of plant-based burgers, and this place was a 10 out of 10,\u201d Peres said. \u201cThat\u2019s how good it was.\u201d<\/p>\n Although the restaurant has only been open for a short time, there are already plans to open a second San Diego location. A Hillcrest restaurant is expected to open in the coming months on Fifth Ave., where the Italian bistro Chocolat was located until closing about a year ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PACIFIC BEACH \u2013 If you happen to be strolling along Garnet Avenue and stumble upon a fast food…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[10131,42962,89964,12258,74,76,75,39865],"class_list":["post-191852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-mcdonalds","tag-mr-charlies","tag-not-chicken-nuggets","tag-pacific-beach","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-vegan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}