Inside Walnut Creek’s Strange Two-Story Shake Shack in a 108 Year Old Building

You walk into a fast food restaurant and place your order at the standard, nondescript counter. You wait for your food, and it finally comes out.

It’s burgers and french fries—again, pretty standard fast food fare. It’s served on the little disposable paper containers that you see everywhere.

Then, you hop in an elevator that makes strange clunking noises, slowly ride up one floor, and sit down in an incongruous upper level. As you eat your burger, you look out a little window nook and watch an aerial view of the street passing below.

It’s a somewhat strange architectural experience of dining at the Shake Shack in Walnut Creek, California.

The Walnut Creek Shake Shack opened to much celebration several years ago. It replaced a former maternity clothing store that occupied the same structure.

They updated the building but didn’t change its fundamental architecture. And this building is pretty odd! In fact, it dates all the way back to 1916, and for decades served as a Masonic temple.

Eating there starts normally—you’ve got the standard ordering area you’d find in any fast food place.

There’s a bit of seating downstairs. But there’s also what might be the world’s slowest, clunkiest elevator that will take you upstairs to a strange elevated seating area.

The seating area is open to the kitchen and tables below, so you can watch people eat from above if that’s what you want to do.

Or, you can find tables set into what appear to be former window alcoves of an upper room of the Masonic temple and munch on your burger and fries while you watch Mount Diablo Blvd down below.

Again, this place really doesn’t feel like a restaurant! It feels like a home that’s been retrofitted to serve food. Placing a fast food joint inside a 100+ year old building will do that, I guess.

And the stores around it reinforce that impression; the Warby Parker across the street is located in what’s literally a converted home.

It makes for a strange contrast. You’ve got your (surprisingly expensive) fast food, but you’re in a strangely domestic setting with a strangely nice view.

I guess that’s just part of the charm of eating in a town that wasn’t set up to be strip malls and shopping centers!