Hamburger America (35 page)

The Witch Doctor is a great drink, but the bestseller at What-A-Burger is the “Cherry-Lemon Sundrop.” It’s so popular that Mike told me, “If we couldn’t sell those and burgers I think we’d go out of business.”

Each curb stall is set up in twos and you’ll need to follow curb service etiquette to park correctly. Imagine two gas pumps and you’ll get the idea. In a row of two curb stalls, pull through to the second one so that someone can pull in behind you. I did not do this the first time I visited and received some quizzical looks from regulars.

For many years the curb service at the Mooresville location was not up and running. A lack of qualified carhops led Mike to shut down the talkback speakers and send all of the business indoors. But after pressure from regulars, three years ago the curb service returned. Thanks to that pressure you can now enjoy your What-A-Burger and Witch Doctor curbside.

 

 

C
rabill’s is very, very small. What’s amazing is that the original Crabill’s was much smaller. Eight stools sit bolted to the floor at a small counter and there is barely enough room to pass behind them. “The old place was five times smaller,” grill cook Andy Hiltibran told me. Andy is married to third-generation owner Marsha Crabill, the granddaughter of Forest Crabill, who opened this heartland burger stand nearly 100 years ago.

Crabill’s started as a hamburger counter in picturesque downtown Urbana. It’s the sort of town that Norman Rockwell would have painted in his depiction of everyday life in mid-twentieth century America. Two men, Crabill and Carpenter, opened the minuscule six-stool counter in 1927. After only three days, Crabill bought out Carpenter for $75. The counter remained in operation, run by Forest’s son and daughter-in-law, David and Joyce, until it closed in 1988.

Marsha and Andy decided to restart the family business soon after with the help of Marsha’s parents. They were eager to leave their factory jobs (she worked at Honda, he worked at Bristol-Meyers) so they purchased a small motor home and dubbed it “Crabill’s on Wheels.” They made the rounds of county fairs and horse shows, and after three years on wheels the couple decided to go brick-and-mortar. Crabill’s was reborn on the west side of town, just a few blocks from, and not much larger than, the original location.

The first time I visited the reincarnation of the burger counter, I sat next to a white-bearded regular named Will Yoder who for decades has played the annual town Santa. Will had recently had his teeth removed and was on a soft food diet. Personally, I couldn’t think of a better spot to dine on tasty, soft food. The tiny burgers at Crabill’s, with their pillowy Wonder buns and healthy dose of burger grease, actually do melt in your mouth.

The burgers at Crabill’s are cooked in a wide, shallow griddle. The griddle is filled with about a half inch of grease. “The griddle in the old place was much smaller,” Andy told me, and showed me with his hands only a foot apart. “It was also much deeper.” Small balls of fresh ground beef are tossed into the grease, then pressed once with specially made spatulas. The grillperson uses two of these spatulas at a time to systematically press and flip the dozens of patties floating in the grease with a sort of Benihana-like speed and dexterity. As your burger nears doneness, it gets a splash of grease from a spatula and is transferred to a waiting tiny Wonder bun.

Chopped raw onion, spicy mustard, and relish are standard, but cheese and ketchup are also available. There is a sign on the wall menu that explains that ketchup was introduced in 1990. That’s right, it took ketchup 63 years to be accepted at Crabill’s.

On a busy Saturday Crabill’s can move up to 300 burgers in ten minutes. When someone walks in with an order for 20 doubles, the griddle is quickly filled with the balls of meat and the spatulas start whacking at lighting speed.

Don’t waste your time with singles; go for doubles. Twice the beef, twice the grease, and half the bread. If you are feeling brave, do what some regulars do—ask for yours dipped and you’ll get the top of your bun dipped in the grease. “Some people even like theirs double-dipped,” Andy told me. “That’s where we dip the top and bottom of the bun.” A double, double-dipped anyone?

 

 

“T
his used to be all farm fields out here,” owner of the Gahanna Grill Jimmy Staravecka told me, waving his arm. He pointed to a photo that shows the bar in 1900, not surrounded by much of anything. Looking at the restaurant today in this busy suburb of Columbus, it’s hard to imagine its former surroundings. No one seems to know the age of the building, but supposedly the business dates back to the days of mud streets and horse-drawn carriages. This means the tavern has been pouring drinks for well over a century and makes the Gahanna Grill one of the oldest restaurants in the area.

The nondescript exterior of the tavern yields to a comfortable interior. The wood-paneled walls are covered with photos of the tavern’s past (one depicting the former Gahanna Lanes, a bowling
alley on the premises) and the large bar is surrounded by televisions. The surface of the bar is a potpourri of advertisements for local services—from real estate to a hair salon—laminated directly into the finish. One corner of the bar is dedicated to the Beanie Burger Hall of Fame. Floor-to-ceiling photographs show the brave souls who have ingested the burger that has made the Gahanna famous—the “Double Beanie Burger.”

The regular Beanie Burger itself is a monster, with its patty of fresh ground beef weighing in at about half a pound. The Double gives you two half-pound patties, a photo on the wall, and a free T-shirt for your efforts. But the Beanie Burger, named after the cook who invented it decades ago, does not just contain a perfectly griddled patty. The burger is also piled high with lettuce, tomato, grilled onions, bacon, cheese, and a hearty scoop of homemade coleslaw. The burger is a sloppy, tasty mess that is barely contained by its toasted, soft kaiser roll. For that reason, the kitchen staff takes great pride in stabbing the vertical burger with a large steak knife. I know of no frilly toothpick that could keep this beast together.

Beanie Vesner still mans the grill and turns out hundreds of burgers for the lunchtime crowd consisting mostly of construction workers and faithful regulars. Jim Ellison, a friend who alerted me to this hamburger destination, calls the Beanie Burger “A good, manly lunch,” referring to the nearly 100 percent male population at noon. “Dinnertime is different, mostly families,” Jimmy, the newest owner of the restaurant, told me. “This used to be mainly a lunch crowd with the bar busy at night.” Since he purchased Gahanna in 2005 he has updated the kitchen and added steaks and pastas to the menu.

I asked Beanie how long he had been making burgers at Gahanna and he refused to give me a straight answer. Smiling, with a toothpick in his mouth, he told me, “Maybe 20 years, maybe?” But by other accounts, the figure is more like 30 years.

To make the burger, Beanie grabs a half-pound wad of ground beef measured by hand and presses it flat, also by hand, onto the hot griddle. The burger is flipped once and a bacon weight is placed on top. I asked him how he knew the burger was a half pound and his deadpan response was, “Because I’ve made up probably about three million of them.” I ordered my Beanie Burger cooked to the chef’s specs and ended up with a medium-well, but moist, burger. Beanie told me later, with a shrug, “Most people around here like their burgers well done.”

Jimmy is far from the typical Midwesterner or Ohio native. That’s because he was born in Albania and lived in Brooklyn, New York, for 17 years. He attended cooking school in New York City, owned a pizza parlor, and for a few years was Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s chef at Gracie Mansion. He came to Columbus for opportunity and the quality of life it promised. “In Bensonhurst, we lived in a studio apartment on the sixteenth floor. Here, I live in a mansion, wife,
two kids, two-car garage, backyard, and a pool.” All that, and he owns a restaurant that makes one of the best burgers in America.

12 EAST CENTRAL AVE | MIAMISBURG, OH
45342
937-847-2442 |
WWW.HAMBURGERWAGON.COM
MON–SAT 10:30 AM–7 PM | SUN 11 AM–7 PM

 

 

E
very day of the year two dedicated employees of the Hamburger Wagon open a small garage door and drag a tiny spoked-wheel lunch cart 50 feet to a spot across the street. “It’s pretty awkward to pull,” an employee told me once, “but if you get a running start it’s okay.” The wagon has been selling burgers in roughly the same spot for almost 100 years to faithful regulars from the center of this picturesque town south of Dayton. I asked former owner Michelle Lyons if the Hamburger Wagon would be around for a while and she told me, “I think there would be civil unrest if they tried to get rid of the wagon.”

Born of necessity, the Hamburger Wagon was started by Sherman “Cocky” Porter just after the devastating Dayton Flood of 1913. Miamisburg was evacuated and in shambles, left without power or water. Cocky served burgers from a cart to relief workers and locals who were put to the task of rebuilding the town.

Today, the Wagon still sells the one thing it has sold for almost a century—hamburgers. It’s as basic as you can get. The burger comes one way only, on a bun with pickle and onion, no cheese. You can always tell when someone in line has never been to the wagon when they ask for cheese. Various cranky old men have owned and worked on the Wagon through the decades and Michelle told me, “If you asked for cheese, they’d tell you, ‘If you want cheese, get yer ass over to the McDonald’s!’”