Name: Meet the woman behind one of the Bay Area’s most loved burgers
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Meet the woman behind one of the Bay Area’s most loved burgers

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This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateCarlotta Brown was 43 years old the first time she stepped foot on a golf course.The year was 2007. The course was Lake Chabot, a quirky 27-hole muni in the Oakland hills.She showed up to the course at 9:30 a.m., and then basically never left. For the past 14 years, she’s spent five days a week there, and never once has she hit a golf ball. “All the throwing clubs, missing the ball, hooting and hollering, it’s not for me,” she says.But she's still very much part of the Lake Chabot experience.“She is part of the heart and soul of the golf course,” general manager Ray Robinson tells me over the phone.Some people think she’s the cook, slinging burgers and dogs out of the course’s Hill House — a glorified snack shack conveniently situated in the middle of five different holes.But she’s not. See, she’s the nurse. She’s the doctor. She’s the therapist. She’s the bartender, the head chef, the traffic cop and the President of Huge Smiles and Fun Times.If golf courses had mayors, she’d be the mayor.“With Carlotta, there’s definitely something where she feels like this place is home,” Robinson says. “And she wants to make sure when people come to her home, that they feel taken care of.”If you’ve ever played at Lake Chabot, you very likely have a Carlotta Brown story.There’s the one about the time she gave CPR to a golfer who fainted on the green. Or the one about the golfer who broke their leg, and she had to keep them from going into shock before the paramedics arrived. Or the guy who rolled his entire golf cart ...“Carlotta to the rescue!” she says, like it’s her superhero catchphrase.She’s standing in front of the Hill House on a bluebird afternoon, dressed in her version of a red cape: an elegant crimson velvet dress.Born and raised in golf-challenged Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the 56-year-old Brown has passed on the employee golf tournament for the past 14 years, but still understands the most base aspect of the game as well as anyone.“You know, people come and they have different moods, different attitudes,” she says. “... And if you are mad and got an attitude, once you get past me, you're OK.”Her burger is a big reason why.The Carlotta Burger isn’t just a menu item. It’s a prerequisite for any and all of the 20 tournaments they do every summer. If you’ve ever tried to order a regular burger from Brown, you immediately get the upsell to the Carlotta Burger.And you’re wise to take it.“One day, I was sitting here and I thought, ah, we gotta spice this burger up. So I went home and I said, 'I got to come up with a burger.' So I came up with a burger, and I called it the Carlotta Burger,” she says. “And it's been a No. 1 seller ever since.”What you're getting is an ungodly combination of a 1/3-pound of burger, lettuce, tomato, onion, two types of cheese (both doused with barbecue sauce), a split hot link (also cooked with barbecue sauce bled into it, with the cheese tucked into the link) and four pieces of bacon. According to Brown, in total, there's roughly “a pound of barbecue sauce.”She makes it on a grill you could buy at Home Depot, and it comes with a bag of chips and somehow only costs a dollar more than a regular burger with a bag of chips ($15 total). And whether you order it on the second or the 11th hole, by the time you pick it up a hole later, you’re immediately reminded that no matter how many trees, traps, or hazards you’ve hit in the past hour, everything will be OK.Carlotta's burger has reached the kind of lore that there are stories of some locals who hike all the way up the first few fairways to get one of her burgers … even when they’re not golfing.Cedric the Entertainer is her favorite person she’s ever served a burger to at the course. “Besides my customers,” she adds as quickly as she finished the former sentence.Brown is all about the people who visit the golf course. And also the people who don’t.She’s been a caregiver at Bay Area assisted living facilities for the past 13 years.“Because I love people,” she explains. “And sometimes they just …”She trails off, collects herself and pauses. Before she moved to California, Brown worked at St. Joseph Hospital in Milwaukee, getting instruments ready for the doctor.Finally, Brown finishes.“They just need to know that they're loved, you know? When you're sick or you’re elderly, you already got your own problems. So you're already feeling down. ... I love taking care of people and I love being around people.”And that selflessness extends even to the most challenging situations.“One of my customers, his mom was dying and his mom told him she wants to see me before she passed away, that it would just mean so much to her,” Brown shares. “I was like, 'OK, where's she at?'“So, she was at a nursing home right over here in Oakland. So we went over there to see her. And this is what she told me before she passed away: 'Don't you ever change. You're going to make it far with your personality.’”Brown’s personality never, ever stops. It’s intoxicating. Cart after cart rolls by, and all of them stop. They want Carlotta Burgers. They want to say hi. They want to hear what she has to say.“Do you know anybody that knows Aaron Rodgers?” she shouts to any and all passersby, a Green Bay Packers tip cup sitting on a counter only a few feet from her. “I’m trying to figure out how to get Aaron Rodgers to marry me … ”Yes, she’s already heard Rodgers is engaged to Shailene Woodley. But she doesn’t care.I tell her I went to college with Rodgers, and her eyes get big.“See, that’s the thing. I don't even know who you guys know. Even when you guys are big, like, it really doesn't matter, because my goal is to make sure everybody comes here and has a good time,” she says.Mayor or not, she’s here because she legitimately loves her job.“I do. I do. I do. I really do,” she says. “I really love working here. Yes. I've been here 14 years. That should tell you something.”Carlotta Brown works Wednesday through Sunday at Lake Chabot Golf Course (11450 Golf Links Road in Oakland) inside the Hill House — which you'll find in the middle of five holes (2, 3, 4, 11 and 12). You can get for as cheap as $24. Also: You can get a Carlotta Burger on Monday or Tuesday, too, but it won’t be made by Carlotta.

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateCarlotta Brown was 43 years old the first time she stepped foot on a golf course.The year was 2007. The course was Lake Chabot, a quirky 27-hole muni in the Oakland hills.She showed up to the course at 9:30 a.m., and then basically never left. For the past 14 years, she’s spent five days a week there, and never once has she hit a golf ball. “All the throwing clubs, missing the ball, hooting and hollering, it’s not for me,” she says.But she's still very much part of the Lake Chabot experience.“She is part of the heart and soul of...

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Grant Marek

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Meet the woman behind one of the Bay Area’s most loved burgers

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