This may be Y&H’s favorite time of the year, when friends and neighbors and even the local grocery store pull out their charcoal grills (or smokers, if you’re into that whole messy, drawn-out process) and start cooking up burgers and brats and Portabellas and anything else that benefits from a little smoke and char. Personally, I can detect a working grill at a thousand paces.

Which is why I wheeled into the Whole Foods on P Street when I saw this gent grilling up some burgers, kebabs, and dogs. The grill was a tractor beam, inexorably pulling my vehicle over to the curb like some Meat Death Star.

The friendly dude working the grates says, now that the weather’s nice, Whole Foods will be trotting out the grill for lunch and dinner on weekdays and all day long on weekends. The typical offerings will include burgers (cheese extra), hot dogs, chicken kebabs, and, because Whole Foods knows its audience, the occasional Tofurky dog. Prices range from about $3 to $5.

Given the quality of meats and condiments found inside the store, I’d think our street food scene just improved by a factor of two.

A couple more pictures after the jump.

Whole Foods may offer the only grilled food available on D.C.’s streets.

The burgers will taste even better when tomato season hits.