Charcoal’s Served Its Final Burger ‘Until Further Notice’

On Memorial Day, Charcoal’s Gourmet Burger Bar, the build-your-own-burger restaurant with meat options that ranged far beyond beef to elk and red beans, served its last burger “until further notice.”

According to a note posted on the restaurant’s Facebook page,

Friends, Charcoal’s Gourmet Burger Bar is planning to move. The restaurant will continue, only the building has been sold..Charcoal’s will continue to operate through Memorial Day, then pause operations on May 30, 2017. .Blaine Prestenbach, co-owner of Charcoal’s, plans to continue to operate the business. He will reveal its new address as soon as the lease is finalized.

“The business has never been for sale, only the building,” Prestenbach said. “This is nothing but an address change, and we expect to be back up and running later this summer in a great location with a smaller footprint."

Blaine Prestenback and Craig Walker, Jr. (both from Houma and raised in Lafayette) opened Charcoal’s Gourmet Burger Bar on Valentine’s Day in 2013 in a two-story, 6,000 square foot space. It took six years to open from the time that Prestenbach, Walker, and Walker’s father, cardiologist Craig Walker Sr. bought the vacant lot on the corner of Jackson and Magazine in 2007. While waiting for the building to be completed for Charcoal’s, Walker and Prestenbach opened Somethin’ Else Cafe and Vieux Carre Seafood and Meats. Both closed, but many of the most popular menu items had been incorporated into the menu at Charcoal’s.