There’s the beef: Charm City Burger Co. announces opening date for new Boca Raton restaurant

Better make room for a double cheeseburger, South Florida.

Sirloin slingers Evan David and Mike Saperstein definitely have.

After more than two years of delays, the owners of the critically beloved Charm City Burger Co. in Deerfield Beach tell the South Florida Sun Sentinel they will debut their first sister restaurant in downtown Boca Raton on Friday, Jan. 23. The long-awaited location will feature a dramatically larger space and menu including cheesesteak subs, chicken tenders, salads, new sides and desserts.

But there’s a (non)change in store for their original headquarters. The pair initially planned to rebrand their funky flagship in Deerfield Beach into a sandwich-focused shop with hot and cold subs. Those plans are scrapped, they say, and now the 18-year-old original on Hillsboro Boulevard, known for award-winning burgers ground fresh daily, deep-fried Oreos and sinful milkshakes, will stay exactly the same.

David and Saperstein say they had good reason to change their minds: Beefing up is just good business.

“Right now, [Charm City] Deerfield is in harmony,” says David, who cosigned a 15-year lease on the Boca Raton building, formerly Baja Cantina. “These past two years — I don’t like to use the term ‘maxed out’ — but sales have been great, so we thought, why not keep both open? There are Shake Shacks down the street from each other, and McDonald’s, too, and they thrive. So let’s see how Deerfield and Boca coexist.”

Compared with Deerfield Beach, Charm City’s outpost at 201 NW First Ave. will be super-sized in both footprint and parking, occupying a 2,200-square-foot building that evokes more Boca Raton clubhouse than burger joint. It’s distinguished by terracotta roof shingles, off-white stucco walls and glass-block windows framed by palms and planter boxes. It’s two blocks from a Brightline station, three short blocks west of Mizner Park, and smack-dab in the middle of a planned redevelopment boom.

It will feature 30 parking spaces, compared with just four in the Hillsboro Square plaza, and 44 seats in the dining room and patio, doubling that of its flagship — two features that have stifled Charm City Deerfield’s growth in the past, Saperstein says.

They also added a new yellow garage door to “open up the dining room” to the patio, but the real transformation is indoors: New structural walls, plumbing and bathrooms, and a “top-to-bottom” upgraded kitchen with new hoods, sinks, bun toaster, a massive cooktop grill and two deep-fryers, Saperstein says.

“We were lucky to have an architect that has worked with many other burger chains in the past,” Saperstein says. “Our grill now is twice the size, our layout is diner-style with retro colors, so it looks similar [to the Deerfield location].”

But the road to expansion, they admit, wasn’t easy.

Boca burger gamble

In June 2023, a minor existential crisis sparked Charm City’s evolution, David says. When their landlord announced plans to sell the Deerfield Beach strip mall they occupied that summer, the pair grew concerned about the restaurant’s survival and signed a second lease, in Boca Raton.

“We didn’t want Charm City to end, so we were forced to look for a new space,” he recalls. “We had all these employees working for us 13, 14 years, and it would’ve devastated fans.”

Then came a reprieve: Their new Boca Raton landlord, Investments Limited, which owns a glut of commercial space in northern Broward and southern Palm Beach counties, also decided to buy their Deerfield Beach strip mall, which allowed them to keep both Charm City locations.

“That saved us,” David says. “And now we have both locations. Everything is exciting now, especially in Boca and that whole area around the Brightline station.”

David and Saperstein have helped grow Deerfield Beach and Boca Raton’s dining scene from the moment they debuted Charm City in 2008. David, a University of Colorado political science graduate, had met Saperstein, a former executive chef and onetime James Beard Award semifinalist (for Pompano Beach’s Cafe Maxx), a decade earlier.

Together, they opened a Mexican taqueria, El Jefe Luchador, in 2011 across the street from Charm City, followed by the late eclectic American restaurant on Palmetto Park Road, Rebel House, in 2012. But Charm City is their most acclaimed, winning the Riverwalk Burger Battle’s “Best Burger” designation multiple times (and it ranked high again in 2017 and 2019, per the Sun Sentinel’s own unscientific polling).

Charm City Boca’s construction hit snags immediately. While the process played out, the owners say they quietly tested new menu items in Deerfield, including smashed meatball and cheesesteak subs and a deep-fried, Bloomin’ Onion-esque creation called a Southern Fried Sweet Onion Bloomer with jalapeño ranch dipping sauce. The meatball handheld — smashed on the griddle until the crust crisps like a hamburger, and topped with marinara, provolone and mozzarella on a toasted garlic roll — is now a Deerfield-only special; the rest will debut in Boca.

Other new Boca Raton menu additions include hand-breaded chicken tenders with a choice of six dipping sauces, along with grilled corn ribs with Alabama white barbecue sauce, potato chips flash-fried in beef tallow (or sunflower oil). That’s in addition to charred broccoli caesar and kale apple crunch salads and, for dessert, a “half-baked” chocolate chip peanut butter cookie with vanilla ice cream and an oatmeal milk stout float.

Saperstein says controlling some supply-chain levers is helping them keep burgers affordable. They own Sunshine Provisions, a Hallandale Beach-based boutique meat wholesaler, which supplies many South Florida restaurants with high-end prime cuts, including Oceano Kitchen in Lantana and Evelyn’s at the Four Seasons in Fort Lauderdale, along with this week’s Visit Lauderdale Food & Wine Festival.

“Mike and I are in it for the long haul,” David says. “We’ve built trust with Sunshine and Charm customer bases, and we just don’t see burgers as an area to increase prices on, I guess. The value and consistency is what keeps people coming back week after week.”

The new location arrives just as Boca Raton braces for a sweeping downtown revitalization, particularly with the One Boca project, which calls for 900 new residences, retail, offices and a revamped city government campus on 7.8 acres of land around Charm City.

“We’re in a very popular town, so it’s inevitable things will grow up around us,” says David, who lives in east Boca Raton. “Our location is wonderful regardless of any new project. We’ve got lots of government workers nearby, Mizner across the street, the Brightline, so we’re happy.”

Charm City Burger Co., 201 NW First Ave., Boca Raton, is scheduled to open on Friday, Jan. 23. Go to CharmCityBurgerCo.com or call 561-928-2476.