Latest: Feb 2025
HQ: Cheshire, CT; Founded in 1991 (Newark, DE)
Locations: Wayback is nationwide, but lightly populated. It's difficult to calculate how many total they have. They have 2 stores in Colorado, the other in Englewood / Denver. Looks like they have 5 in DFW (one opening soon) with north Fort Worth being the closest from our old home in Keller.
If there's a restaurant Mrs. RJG has been craving, it's Wayback Burgers. She threatened to go to Woodland Park alone multiple times just to have that Cheesy burger I enjoyed last time. It never happened (as I predicted below), so I knew that Woodland Park needed to be our first "mountain incursion" of 2025, much later than usual (the wedding in Mexico is why). It's a very cold Tuesday around 11:30 when we arrived. Restaurant is empty though we saw two patrons on the way out with a to-go order. We each ordered (of course) the Cheesy along with one order of fries and two milkshakes. She got the Pistachio and I got the Chocolate Brownie.
I think our respective orders totaled 10,000 calories each if I calculated right (see to your right). First the shakes came out, mine was wrong but they fixed it straight away. Oh yea, this is good stuff. Too good really and I need to stop having them. Then out came our cheeseburgers. Perfectly cooked double patties, hot to the touch, with toasted reverse buns. Delicious. You can really taste the beef. I just realized that last year I added lettuce and mustard. I should have done that again to balance the flavor a bit more. The homemade fries were also excellent and hot. Everything was as good as we remembered.
On the downside, Wayback Burgers is very expensive for a counter serve restaurant. $38 is a tab I would expect at a sit down full service establishment. Since we only go annually (though Mrs. RJG continues to insist we go more), it's a splurge meal. We've enjoyed the experience to date, so we'll definitely go back. Only one other to-go order showed up while we were there. But it was a slow Tuesday in the middle of winter, so we're not drawing too many conclusions from that. Maybe we should go in the middle of July to get a true assessment of how their business is going.
---original 3/9/24 review
Back on home turf, and Mrs. RJG and I decided a short drive into the mountains would be in order. Especially on this cold, crisp, beautiful clear blue sky day. Woodland Park is our closest true mountain town, and it makes for a nice getaway. I had heard that Wayback Burgers were going to open there, and it appears they did that five or six months ago. Apparently they used to be here in the Springs at some point, but I don't remember the name, and this is my first experience with the restaurant. The chain started as Jake's Hamburgers and I had wondered if it was the same brand that we knew in DFW. Nope, that's a different setup (Jake's Burgers and Beer). Perhaps that's why they changed their name ("rebranded" in corporate speak). There's no alcohol here, strictly a family oriented fast food joint. This is one of those chains that attempts to regain the "the way things used to be." As my dad always appended "...and probably never were."
Wayback Burgers sits in a strip center, with a very confusing parking lot situation. Once you get settled, walk in, and order at the counter. I went for the Cheesy with lettuce and mustard. And a Pistachio milkshake. Mrs. RJG got a single cheeseburger with cheese, lettuce, pickles, onions, and mustard. Plus fries and a drink.
I have to say this is one of the most flavorful hamburgers I've ever had. The meat is extremely tasty. If you get the Cheesy as is, it comes with two oversized beef patties and extra slices of cheese. The bread is served almost Patty Melt style with two flat topped and toasty buns. I received plenty of envious stares from Mrs. RJG, whose hamburger was more standard. She stated the same as me though, that the flavor of the burger was insanely good. She asked for light mustard and they squirted too much on there, but otherwise she was happy. The hand cut potato fries were excellent as well. The pistachio shake almost seemed more like a vanilla shake with chocolate whip cream. It wasn't very green nor pistachio-y in flavor. But I still enjoyed the heck out of it :-). Mrs. RJG even boldly declared she was coming to Woodland Park on her own during the mid week to have them for lunch again. She probably won't, but we for certain will be back next year, if not sooner.
3/9/24 (new entry); 2/18/25
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