On the Richmond Burger Trail: Red Onion under the BART tracks

Under the rumble of BART trains and across from the orange glow of Home Depot’s facade, The Red Onion sits like a time capsule from an era when burgers cost three bucks and nobody complained about paying for quality.

The Richmond Burger Trail is an ongoing culinary quest by the Grandview Independent to find and celebrate the best burgers in Richmond and nearby neighborhoods.

Each stop along the trail highlights a local institution while exploring the unique character of the neighborhoods they call home. Part food review, part community story, the Richmond Burger Trail is about more than just burgers: it’s a love letter to simple, satisfying meals and the people who make them, proving that sometimes the most authentic local flavor comes with a side of fries.

The Red Onion’s cheeseburgers and fries may not have been the most photogenic after the trip to Grandview headquarters, but the flavor more than made up for it.

This neighborhood institution occupies the sweet spot between Home Depot’s industrial orange glow and the friendly neighborhood cannabis dispensary, because nothing says modern California quite like picking up mulch, a burger, and an eighth all on the same block.

Our quest for a decent burger began, as all great culinary adventures do, with someone complaining on the internet. “Where can you get a great burger around here?” they pleaded into the digital void.

But buried in online chatter like a golden french fry at the bottom of the bag was the real recommendation: The Red Onion.

Walking into this place is like being transported to 1973, when gas was fifty cents a gallon and nobody had heard of kale. The building screams Americana so loudly that you half expect a bald eagle to perch on the red shingled roof.

Inside, the grillmaster is multitasking, taking orders while packing up burgers and fries. I can take your order, she says. Then you watch your burger being born on the griddle, which is either reassuring or terrifying, depending on your relationship with food preparation transparency.

Our three burgers come to life on the Red Onion grill.

The ordering process is refreshingly straightforward: no grass-fed versus grain-fed debates, no artisanal bun selections, no server asking if you’ve “dined with us before.” You want a burger? They make burgers.

We ordered three burgers and three orders of fries. The damage: $53. Cue the inevitable “prices have gone up” lament, as if inflation was invented specifically to ruin our burger experiences. But here’s the thing about complaining about burger prices in 2025: you either pay for quality or you eat disappointment wrapped in paper. Choose wisely.

The signature creation arrives looking like what a burger should look like if burgers had any sense of self-respect. The thick beef patty looks like it spent time on a hot grill, iceberg lettuce (because fancy greens have no business on a proper burger), tomato, mayo, and the pièce de résistance, red onion, and mayo. Not white onions. Red onion. “That’s the signature difference,” as one astute observer noted.

Sometimes the most obvious things need to be pointed out.

Two slices of American cheese, “carefully rotated” so they provide complete patty coverage, because cheese architecture matters, people. Mayo, mustard (just enough to show up as “a little yellow” on your plate).

The first bite delivers what food scientists call “the Nation's Experience,” that specific combination of beef, cheese, and nostalgia that defined California burger joints before everything became “elevated” and “artisanal.” It’s big, it’s beefy, it’s cheesy, and it doesn’t apologize for being exactly what it is.

Is it better than Phila Burger Station? “It was similar, but it was better than Phila Burger.” In the complex world of Bay Area burger diplomacy, this translates to: “Yes, but I don’t want to start any online feuds.”

But let’s address the elephant in the room: that $53 price tag. The internet warriors want “something good but you’re not willing to pay for it.” They demand “prices from 30 years ago” while simultaneously expecting 2025 quality, 2025 wages for the staff, and 2025 rent prices to magically not exist.

The Red Onion exists in the beautiful chaos of modern California: BART trains rattling overhead like mechanical thunder, Home Depot selling suburban dreams across the street, the cannabis dispensary next door serving a completely different kind of hunger. And in the middle of this perfectly ridiculous tableau sits a little red-roofed burger joint, stubbornly serving the same food that’s been making people happy for decades.

The Red Onion is located at 11900 San Pablo Avenue, just across the border in El Cerrito, where the BART tracks provide free percussion accompaniment to your meal and the American flag flies proudly over what might be the most honest burger in the Bay Area. Cash and cards accepted. Existential food crises solved daily.

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