Hamburger America (38 page)

There are many different burgers on the menu, but it’s the Thurman Burger that outsells them all. The creation starts with a three-quarter-pound patty of griddled fresh ground beef that is topped with (follow me here) grilled onions, lettuce, tomato, sliced sautéed mushrooms, pickle, jalapeño slices, mayonnaise, and a half-pound mound of sliced ham. The pile of ingredients is then covered with both mozzarella and American cheese, capped with a toasted bun, and speared with extra-long toothpicks. When I say tall, I’m guessing this burger stands no less than seven inches high. Get your mouth ready.

“The best way to eat this thing,” local burger expert and friend Jim Ellison told me, “is to press it down and flip it over. The juices have already destroyed the bottom bun.” He was right, and flipping worked, but after the first few bites something went wrong and my burger imploded. The combination of ingredients and sheer size beg for your patience. Take your time and enjoy this pile of goodness. It’s a sloppy burger.

On a busy Saturday at Thurman, the kitchen will prepare and serve up to 500 of the famed burgers. “We go through over 1,500 pounds of beef a week,” Mike Suclescy told me. Good meat too. Mike buys only top-quality 85/15 ground chuck and told me, “We ran out once and went over to the Kroger Supermarket for ground beef. The taste just wasn’t the same.”

The “Blue Cheeseburger” (for which the Suclescys go through over eight gallons of blue cheese dressing a week) is also a big seller as is the “Macedonian,” served on Texas toast with sweet red peppers. Or try the new “Thurmanator,” a Thurman Burger on top of a cheddar cheeseburger. You heard correctly, it’s basically a double Thurman Burger. A regular cheeseburger has been banished to the bottom of the menu, clearly a lightweight choice at this tavern.

My favorite-sounding concoction was the “Johnnie Burger.” Invented by a chronic tequila-quaffing regular, the Johnnie is a three-quarter-pound burger with bacon and blue cheese that’s drizzled with a shot of top-shelf 1800 tequila. No lettuce, tomato, or mayo is offered because, as Johnnie once explained, “If I wanted a salad, I’d order one!”

 

 

I
t’s hard to miss Wilson’s as you roll through downtown Findlay, Ohio. The restaurant is on a busy crossroads in the center of town with the word WILSON spelled above the front door in large black letters. Across the street sits the impressive former Marathon Oil world headquarters: a beautiful glass, steel, and concrete monument to the automobile age.

Wilson’s has walls of windows on three sides. From inside, the sun-drenched space makes you feel like you’re in a huge fishbowl. Grab a stool at one of the long counters lining the windows, watch small town America unfold, and enjoy a fresh-ground hamburger and a chocolate malt.

The building is the second constructed in the restaurant’s long history. The first, built in 1936, was a stunning example of enamel steel road food culture. It was replaced with a greatly expanded Wilson’s in the mid-sixties. During construction of the new Wilson’s, the tiny yellow restaurant was pushed to the back of the parking lot and remained open. The original Wilson’s was as narrow as a subway car and held only 32 people. Today’s newer building seats over 130 hungry patrons in a wide dining room filled with a combination of booths, tables, and counters. Expect to find a line to the door at lunch and dinner.

Stub Wilson opened Wilson’s Sandwich Shop in 1936. A few years earlier, Stub had opened two Kewpee restaurants in nearby Lima, Ohio and decided to open another in Findlay. Finding another Kewpee already in Findlay (the restaurants were independently owned), he chose to name the new restaurant after himself. When Stub Wilson died, he passed all three restaurants onto his managers—the Kewpees in Lima went to Harrison Shutt and Wilson’s went to three managers, Woody Curtis, Wilber Fenbert, and Lance Baker. Today, Wilson’s is part owned and run by Lance Baker’s widow, Pat. After a few years of decline, Pat stepped in to take charge of the situation. “I got everybody back on track and back in uniforms.” She was wise not to change the menu and she told me, “The burgers are still hot, juicy, and good!”

There’s no question that the burgers at Wilson’s are fresh. Three times a week the restaurant receives a delivery of 600 pounds of beef from a slaughterhouse in Lima. Every morning the staff grinds and patties enough for the day’s burgers. A patty machine attached to the grinder forms them into square patties, a shape that Wendy’s popularized in the late 1960s but actually hails from the original Kewpee restaurants.

The basic, three-and-a-half-ounce griddled burger comes with mustard, pickle, and onion. Make it a “Special” and you’ll also get lettuce, tomato, and mayo (for only 40 cents more). Just think; it only takes 40 cents to make your burger special.

Similarities between the Kewpees of Lima and Wilson’s still exist, but the most notable is the historically significant vegetable sandwich. Listed on the menu as the “Veggie,” this meatless sandwich (a Special without the patty) is a product of the WWII years when meat rationing forced many burger stands to adapt or shut down. White Castle temporarily embraced the grilled cheese sandwich, many others went to fish sandwiches, and Wilson’s (and the Kewpees of Lima) introduced the vegetable sandwich.

Wilson’s is the type of happy place that you remember from your youth. People come from all over to eat the burgers they ate growing up in Findley. Mark Metcalf, an actor from Findley best known for his role as the R.O.T.C. commander Neidermeyer in the film
Animal House
, recalls Wilson’s burgers fondly. He told me by phone, “My grandfather used to go down to Wilson’s and bring back bagfuls of hamburgers.” Pat is aware of the restaurant’s popularity and its place in the memory of anyone who was raised on Wilson’s burgers. And I for one am overjoyed that she had the good sense to step in to basically rescue Wilson’s. She told me, “We want to stick around for a while. We have a seventy-fifth anniversary coming up.”

 

 

T
he hours posted in the window at Claud’s are correct but slightly loose depending on the number of people waiting outside for the 56-year-old hamburger counter to open. “Depends on how I feel that morning,” Robert Hobson said with a smile after opening a few minutes early. “Every day is different.”

Robert and his brother, Cliff, own the tiny, bright diner in the neighborhood of Brookside, just south of downtown Tulsa. In 1985, Claud Hobson passed the business to his sons, who had already put in plenty of years behind the counter. “I was four months old when he moved to this location [in 1965],” Robert told me. “I guess you can say I’ve been here all my life.”

The interior of Claud’s is clean and utilitarian, with white walls and a long counter lined with short green and chrome swivel stools. The Hobsons have only the absolute basics behind the faux-wood Formica counter: a flattop griddle, refrigerators, and a deep fryer, everything in gleaming stainless steel. Large picture windows allow ample daylight to stream in and passing cars on South Peoria send flashes down the counter.

The burgers at Claud’s are a lesson in simplicity. When Claud was at the griddle your options were only mustard, pickle, and onion. Today, his sons have expanded options slightly to include lettuce and tomato. American cheese reigns supreme but as Robert told me with a sigh, “We also offer pepper jack cheese, but I think I made three yesterday.” Robert is a man after my own heart. “Our main focus is the meat,” He told me standing at the griddle. “When you cover it up with all that stuff you lose the taste.”

The burger to get at Claud’s is the double cheeseburger with onions. The onion is not just a slice tossed on cold or grilled to limp. When you order yours with onions watch what happens. To the right of the flattop is a small piece of white marble embedded in the countertop. Robert takes a patty, slaps it onto the marble, and works a handful of chopped raw onion into the patty with the back of a stiff spatula. He then takes the flattened patty and plops it, onion-side down, onto the hot flattop. If you require a double, Robert takes two patties and stacks them on the marble and works them together with the spatula. The result is a very flat, wide burger that hangs far outside the white squishy bun, a style that has been Claud’s for decades.

The only change Claud’s burger has seen over the years was an increase in the size of the patty from 2 to 3 ounces and a switch from balled-beef to pre-formed patties. After two decades of balling ground chuck to smash into patties, Claud finally purchased a patty machine in the early seventies. “He used to say,” Robert told me, “if someone is smart enough to make a machine to make my life easier, I’m smart enough to buy it.”

Before it was Claud’s, the burger counter was well known as Van’s Hamburgers, part of a mini-chain in Tulsa. Claud opened his original burger joint in 1954 about 2 miles west of downtown but moved to the Van’s on South Peoria in 1965. “He was actually ‘chosen’ to take over this location,” Robert told me. The busy thoroughfare has its share of burger joints with the 80-year-old Weber’s Root Beer Stand directly across the street and a Sonic Drive-In just two doors down from Claud’s. Amazingly, the Sonic has not affected their business.

Robert is 45 years young and plans to run the business for a while. “I plan on being here until our seventy-fifth anniversary!” he told me with a chuckle, which would be in 2030. “Maybe longer.”