Hamburger America (22 page)

Hunter House is a comfortable, pleasant place that serves high quality burgers. Go there to meet the ridiculously friendly staff and if you are lucky you’ll get the impossibly extroverted server Chelsea. The future of Hunter House is secure too. “We just had a family meeting and discussed the future,” Susan told me. “The kids never want to sell.”

 

 

A
visit to Blimpy Burger can be a daunting but rewarding experience. Theatrically, the cooks behind the counter engage in a sort of Soup Nazi berating of customers who do not follow the cafeteria-style rules of ordering. “Just answer the questions I’m asking you,” grill cook Brian told a group of newcomers the first time I visited. In reality, the rules are there to help you, not scare you. They are there to allow the cooks to get your food to you fast, which is a good thing because you’ll need this burger in your mouth as soon as possible.

Blimpy Burger is on the edge of the University of Michigan campus, surrounded by student rental houses with mud lawns. For students, the positioning of this decades-old greasy spoon could not be better. The interior of Blimpy Burger is wholly utilitarian and the opposite of a comfy dive. A low drop ceiling and greenish fluorescent lighting give the place a construction trailer feel. A collection of vintage cast-iron swivel stools bolted to the floor serve most tables. The original owner, Krazy Jim Shafer, purchased the stools from a department store that had gone out of business in the 1950s for $1.75 apiece.

In 1953 Jim Shafer turned a corner grocery into a burger stand to sell cheap burgers to University of Michigan students. At his previous burger venture, shoehorned into an alley in downtown Ann Arbor, a friend at a neighboring business called Jim “crazy” for selling food for so cheap. The moniker stuck, as did the famous phrase that greets customers at Blimpy Burger: “Cheaper Than Food.” Current owner Richard Manger told me, “Back then it was cheaper to buy a 20-cent burger than to eat at home.”

Richard bought the restaurant in 1992 from Krazy Jim, who was already in retirement. Jim and Rich had a past together at that point—Rich had worked as a cook flipping burgers in the late’60s for Jim at Blimpy, had met his wife, Chris, there (also a student), and had designed the Blimpy logo that is still used today. It’s a drawing of a seated, chubby bear smiling and hoisting a burger. “Jim wanted me to draw a cow. I told him ‘I don’t draw cows. I draw bears.’”

Richard’s menu design is an elaborate piece of R. Crumb-inspired line art that is suitable for framing. It lists a dizzying assortment of comfort foods and toppings for the burgers. Rich told me, “When Jim opened he only had burgers, American cheese, pie, and coffee.” Not so today. The selection of toppings and burger sizing is so vast it prompted a math student to deduce that there are more than 2,147,483,648 possible burger combinations.

The fresh chuck that is used for Blimpy burgers is ground daily in the back. When you ask for a burger, you tell the grill cook how many you’d like (up to five, a “quint”) and he’ll grab that number of one-and-a-half-ounce balls of beef. The balls are tossed onto the hot griddle and smashed together, creating a sloppy, misshaped, flat patty. The burgers are pressed and pressed until they can get no thinner, flipped, pressed some more, then tossed on a bun. You’d think these guys had pressed the life out of your burger, but relax; you are in good hands. The result is a glorious grease bomb—a pile of loose, griddled meat that is crunchy in parts and soft in others. The meat is so loose it’s practically pebbly. A grill cook once told me, “These things are held together by hope.”

The choice of roll for your burger, toasted on the griddle, includes pumpernickel, onion, or kaiser, the latter offered with or without sesame seeds because, as Rich explained matter-of-factly, “Some people have diverticulitis.” The onion roll is hands-down one of the best I have ever eaten, soft and tasty and able to soak up the copious amounts of grease a Blimpy burger produces. “Onion rolls most places suck,” Rich told me bluntly. “These really are great rolls.”

Following the rules for ordering is important. Start by grabbing a tray and getting in line. Everyone gets a tray because, as Rich pointed out, “It keeps the tables clean when we’re busy.” Then grab a drink and order your fried food of choice first. French fries and onion rings are offered, but skip the usual for excellent deep-fried vegetables like mushrooms and cauliflower. Next, order your burger, but hold your cheese selection until the end of the process. Follow the rules and be rewarded with one of the best burgers in America.

A group of healthy-looking sixty somethings were enjoying their burgers the last time I visited and told me, “This is where we celebrate our birthdays. We’ve been coming here for over 50 years.” When one of the grill guys, Skinny, heard that, he blurted out, “And they STILL don’t know how to order their burgers.”

 

 

T
he first time I visited Miller’s it was in the middle of a torrential springtime downpour. It was 11:15 a.m. on a Wednesday, the bar was packed and everyone was eating hamburgers. Doesn’t that pretty much say it all?

Miller’s is on a commercial stretch, six lanes wide, in Dearborn, Michigan. Across the street from a large Ford dealership, the windowless bar is painted with a fresh coat of red paint and emblazoned with enormous white letters spelling out the name of this nearly 70-year-old institution. Despite the cool functionality of the exterior, the interior, with its original 1940s Brunswick bar of undulating high-gloss wood and booths made of supple deep-red leather, feels more like a long-lost private men’s club than the bunker that the outside evokes. The immaculate well-preserved dining room is dark and cozy and, according to part-owner Mark Miller, has not needed renovation since 1964.

There is no menu at Miller’s but the options are simple—burgers, fries, and onion rings are available, as are tuna, ham, and corned beef sandwiches and of course, drinks from the bar. The clientele is mostly local devotees and regulars from the nearby world headquarters of the Ford Motor Company. They come for the
burgers and have been since 1941, when Mark’s uncle, George Miller, opened the bar. Today, thanks to topping many “Best-of” lists in America, Miller’s Bar sells over 1,200 burgers a day. Every one of those burgers is cooked on a griddle next to the bar that is no more than three feet square.

“Our butcher starts grinding beef for us at 4 a.m. everyday,” Mark told me. Mark owns the bar with his brother, Dennis, and the two are second-generation owners. The Miller’s father Russell bought the bar from his brother George in 1947.

The sprightly grill cook, Kim, who has been flipping burgers at Miller’s for over 20 years, is responsible for griddling the hundreds of perfect, award-winning burgers during the lunch rush. I overheard her take an order for a few burgers “well-done.” Well-done? “Oh gosh yes,” she sighed, “People don’t know how to order their burgers here.” Mark told me he won’t eat anything over a medium, and rightly so, because Miller’s meat is some of the freshest I’ve ever tasted.

The Millers have been using the same butcher for over 40 years. The bar used to get a 400-pound delivery daily of fresh ground beef that would have to be hand pattied by the kitchen staff. “It got to be too much,” Kim told me, so the butcher offered to start delivering preformed patties. Knowing that the Millers wouldn’t accept just any patty, he employs a special patty maker
that injects a blast of air back into the beef. “It makes the patty looser,” Mark explained, “and it has an almost hand-pattied feel.”

The seven-ounce burger is served on a steamed white bun and delivered to you on a square of wax paper. Lettuce and tomato are not offered. Swiss or Velveeta are available, as are the standard condiments like ketchup, mustard, pickle, and sliced onion. But this burger needs no embellishment—so forgo the condiments. The meat is so good you could eat it plain. I asked what it was that made the burger taste so great and Mark told me, “It’s the meat. The meat is great. There are no seasonings and we have no secrets.”

The secret may be in longevity. The staff is great and many have been with Miller’s forever. The day-shift bartender, Jeff, has been pouring drinks for almost 30 years and a waitress named Linda has been delivering burgers at Miller’s since Nixon was in office. The secret may also be in the Miller brothers commitment to the family business. Every Sunday, when the bar is closed, Mark and Dennis take apart the entire kitchen and grill area for a thorough cleansing. Mark told me, “We completely disassemble the griddle, dishwasher . . . everything.” What did
you
do last Sunday?