Hamburger America (28 page)

Soft white buns are toasted on the tiny electric bar griddle alongside the burgers. I asked Tyler if the buns were buttered and he told me, “No, but the burger grease might work its way over there.”

The burgers at the Mo Club are hand-pattied from unmeasured scoops of ground beef. The beef comes in fresh daily from the same butcher they have been using forever. One time while I was at the Mo Club, a man rushed in and dropped two enormous white paper-wrapped wads of fresh meat on the bar right next to me. They had run low and needed to augment the meat supply before the night crowd showed up hungry.

“Our burgers are over a third of a pound each,” owner Mark Laslovich said of the large, juicy patties. Mark also revealed that the amazing tasting burger has chopped onions mixed into the raw meat before they are pattied. Mark has owned the century-old bar since 2000, but has worked there at some capacity for over 45 years. One of the recent changes Mark made at the Mo Club was installing a larger griddle. Well, not too much larger. “This one’s a burger wider than the old one,” Mark said of the tiny two-foot-wide griddle.

Expect to find all types enjoying burgers and beer at the Mo Club. “We get lawyers, doctors, bums, whatever,” Mark pointed out. There is an old-school sports bar feel to the place, but not the kind that hangs gaudy memorabilia on every usable inch of wall space. The Mo Club’s walls are blanketed with decades of UM team photos up to the high ceiling, as well as signed sports portraits of Missoula natives who went on to professional fame elsewhere in America.

As bars go, the Mo Club is a clean one. “It wasn’t always this clean,” Mark told me. “When I took over, this place was a mess.” I asked Mark why the lighting was more conducive to a well-lit truck stop than a cozy Irish pub and he explained, “People come in here and look for themselves in these team photos.” He and the other bartenders also believe it keeps people honest and the fights to a minimum. Mark told me that a group of women who frequent the bar once asked him to install a dimmer because they were getting older. His advice: “Have another beer.”

 

 

S
tella’s is not a fancy place. If you are looking for tablecloths and silverware—go elsewhere. If you are in search of a burger fix and don’t mind eating off a napkin, you’ve come to the right place.

When I first found this burger outpost south of Omaha it was a ramshackle place on a hill surrounded by a dusty gravel parking lot. You could barely make out the name of the restaurant haphazardly spelled out in vinyl lettering on the front window. Today, the dirt lot is now paved and the entire restaurant has received a much needed facelift. In 2007 Stella’s son, Al, and his wife, Mary, sold the decades-old restaurant to cousin Stephanie Francois. The restaurant is now run by Stephanie with the help of her parents Gene and Pam Francois. Stella’s
Hamburgers remains a family business after all these years.

Tiny Stella Francois Sullivan Tobler opened the sunroom at the front of her home to burger lovers in 1936. Within a few years, her home had morphed into a restaurant with a gas station and a general store. She purchased the bar next door and in 1949 purchased a plot of land a mile away and moved both the house and bar. The bar became the restaurant, and the house and sunroom went back to being a home, and since then nothing much has changed. Look for the portrait of Stella hanging near the bar with the inscription OUR FOUNDER.

The burgers have increased in size since Stella’s time from 5.2 to 6.5 ounces. Fresh ground beef is delivered to the restaurant, portioned, and made into patties daily. Frozen patties are not an option at Stella’s and as Gene pointed out, “We go through so much that it would be impossible for it not to be fresh.”

The burger at Stella’s is an explosion of grease and flavor. Stella’s granddaughter, Lisa, told me once, “You don’t come to Stella’s because you are watching what you are eating.” It’s served on an impossibly soft white pillow of a bun with lettuce, tomato, pickles, and a choice of either grilled or raw onion. Both top and bottom halves of the bun receive a generous layer of mayonnaise, and the burger is delivered no-nonsense on a paper napkin. Stella believed that good food didn’t need to be fancy.

The menu has changed slightly under the new ownership and a new burger “challenge” has been added called the “Stellanator.” If you can finish this 6-patty burger that stands over a foot tall, you’ll get your name on the “Wall of Fame” and eat for free. If you can’t finish, you’ll have to pay for your meal. “Over 40 have tried,” Gene told me, “but only 2 have finished it so far.

Stella’s son, Al, took over the restaurant in 1974, and Stella continued to come in daily. “She worked up to three days prior to her death,” Lisa told me. Al still comes into the restaurant just like Stella did in her retirement.

Stella’s today may look very different but rest assured the same cast-iron griddle and practices are in place. Gene put it best when he told me, “Stella made it simple to follow in her footsteps.”

 

 

“Y
ou can always tell that it’s someone’s first time here when they pull the door like that,” short-order chef Bambi told me. I had trouble getting in the front door of this six-decade-old diner because the door is not normal. It slides open like a pocket door, revealing one of the most beautiful hidden gems in all of New England.

Gilley’s PM Lunch is an old Worcester diner. In the first half of the twentieth century, the Worcester Lunch Car Company of Worcester, Massachusetts, was the premier supplier of mobile lunch carts and prefabricated diners. Their distinct design set the precedent for all diners that followed in America.

Gilley’s is now permanently situated on a lot donated by the City of Portsmouth, but prior to 1973 the cart was towed out to the center of town and served food to late-night workers and other hungry people until the wee hours of the morning. There was a time in America, especially in New England, when carts like this were everywhere at night. Many of them were Worcester diners and very few exist today. Gilley’s is one of the last.

Though slightly modified, Gilley’s retains its barrel-shaped roof and enamel steel paneled interior,
and its kitchen still occupies one narrow end of the car. It’s a true step back in time with its tiny griddle and eight stools lining the wood-framed windows. New owner (as of 1993) Stephen Kennedy told me, “I had to take two stools out because it gets pretty crowded in here from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m.” He says sometimes over 40 people are crammed into the tiny diner waiting for their hamburgers and hot dogs. During the late shift Gilley’s can move over 500 burgers.

“Isn’t that beautiful?” a customer said as he tilted his plate showing off his double cheeseburger. Both hamburgers and hot dogs are served at Gilley’s; the hot dogs preceded the burgers by more than sixty years. Starting in 1912, the first owners had a horse-drawn cart with wooden wheels that sold mostly hot dogs. Hamburgers were introduced in the 1970s, and share equal popularity today.

The burger to order at Gilley’s is a bacon double cheeseburger. Gilley’s uses only fresh-ground pattied chuck loin that is 85 to 88 percent lean. The patties are small, thin, and just under 3 ounces. Stephen pointed out that it was done that way traditionally for speed, adding, “A smaller burger cooks faster.” The white squishy bun is toasted and no lettuce or tomato is offered. The tiny fridge next to the minuscule two-foot-square griddle is really only big enough for the day’s hot dogs, hamburgers, and cheese.

In 1996 Stephen attached a construction trailer to the original lunch car to expand the kitchen. This allowed him to add a deep fryer and more refrigeration. Adding a barrel roof to one end of the trailer mimicked the original structure and preserved the integrity of the restaurant. The last truck to pull the mobile diner is still attached to one end of Gilley’s, as are the diner’s wheels, now covered by wood paneling.

“Portsmouth is the kind of place where things don’t change much,” cook Bambi mused as I ate my burger. That’s a good thing, especially when it involves a historically significant slice of Americana like Gilley’s. Thanks to people like Stephen Kennedy this tiny lunch cart may be around forever.

 

 

T
he ocean is only three blocks from the Holiday Snack Bar and you can smell it in the salty air. But once you step inside the tiny, seasonal beach diner the smell shifts to burgers. If you arrive at the peak of summer, there’s a good chance that all of the stools at the counter will be taken. All of these customers, fresh from the beach, will be eating either burgers or one of the Holiday’s signature cakes or pies. High school-aged server Hunter told me, “At lunchtime in the summer this place is packed. There are people up against the wall waiting for a spot.” Most likely this is because the burgers are fresh and the bakery is on the premises.