Hamburger America (44 page)

 

 

H
ooray for the mom-and-pop hamburger stand. Giant Drive-In is quite literally a mom-and-pop—owned and operated by a husband and wife team that is dedicated to bringing quality comfort food to the neighborhood and have done so for 30 years.

Bill Kreger and his wife, Gail, bought Giant in 1981 after Bill had burned out on a mechanical engineering career. “We had planned to fix it up and flip it, but here we are!” Bill told me enthusiastically. The odd looking A-frame ski chalet structure was originally part of a failed’60s chain called Mr. Swiss. In 1970 it became Giant and was open for 10 years until a Burger King opened across the street. “The previous owner just gave up, locked the doors, and walked away,” Bill told me. But today, the
Burger King is gone. When I asked Bill what happened, he just smiled and shrugged. I gathered there’s only room for one burger stand in this stretch of suburban Portland.

Starting the business was not easy for the Kregers. “You have to keep your hand in it or you are not going to have it,” Bill explained. “We spent seventeen hours a day, seven days a week for the first seven years to get this place up and running.” The time invested shows—the burgers are excellent.

The list of hamburger concoctions is vast. You can order a standard quarter-pound burger or choose from an eclectic selection of burgers like the “Teriyaki,” the “Hawaiian,” or an “Avocado Burger.” But the burger that gets its own neon sign is the enormous “Filler.” The Filler is almost too big to put in your mouth, but I managed. Its contents are similar to nearby Stanich’s signature burger, but the Filler contains two quarter-pound patties instead of one. The burger also contains a slice of ham, cheese, a fried egg, bacon, lettuce, onion, pickles, tomato, and mayo. All this piled neatly on a locally baked seeded sourdough roll. I was speechless (and dazed) for hours after I consumed this thing. Amazingly, Gail told me it was her burger of choice, but said, “Believe it or not, I actually put an extra patty on it.”

The fresh hamburger patties are delivered daily and come from local grass-fed Angus sirloin. The Kregers request a 90 percent lean grind. “Any less fat and the burger breaks up on the griddle. Any more and the burger shrinks to nothing.” The cheese is also local Tillamook, purchased in 40-pound blocks and sliced on premises. Bill explained, “We try to only use local, fresh ingredients,” and added, “In the summertime Oregon tomatoes can get to be this big,” making a shape with his hands the size of an invisible grapefruit.

The interior of the Giant is a classic retro burger drive-in. Bright, clean, and inviting, the Giant has floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides, booths for seating, and a yellow-and-brown checkered linoleum floor. Hanging over the cash register is a photo of a half dozen UPS trucks lined up in the Giant parking lot. “Once a week the local UPS guys converge on Giant,” Bill explained. “Sometimes there are over fifteen trucks out there.”

I watched the Kregers greet familiar faces, pleasantly take orders, and flip burgers. They make the business of selling hamburgers look easy. But as I left, Gail gave me some sage advice, “Keep your sanity and stay out of the restaurant business!”

 

 

N
estled in the rolling farm country of western Oregon, a short distance from Portland but a world away, sits
a restaurant and bar that amazingly turns out over a thousand burgers on a busy Saturday. The restaurant is the comfortable Helvetia Tavern (pronounced Hel-VAY-sha) and is way out in the country. Regardless of how far it is from anything, burger lovers gladly make the trek to the Helvetia for their signature “Jumbo Burger” and great selection of microbrews on tap.

“It’s a pretty simple menu and nothing has changed since we opened,” part owner Mike Lampros told me. “We did add salads, though, two years ago.” There are a few sandwiches on the menu and a grilled cheese, but I looked around and saw mostly burgers being consumed. A lot of them too—the grill stayed full the entire time I was at Helvetia. They easily served over 200 burgers in the hour that I sat at the counter.

The Jumbo is just that—two thin quarter-pound patties of fresh ground beef are cooked on a large flattop griddle and served on a toasted six-inch bun with bacon, cheese, lettuce, onion, tomato, and the ubiquitous and tasty Pacific Northwest condiment, “Goop” (see sidebar on page 346). The bun is larger than the patties, which are arranged slightly overlapping so the burger is presented wider, not taller. “That’s the way we’ve always done it,” Mike explained. “The single patty is served on a smaller bun.” As a finishing touch, the Jumbo is stabbed in the center and delivered with a plastic knife, as Mike
explained, “to keep the contents from sliding around.” The burgers are moist and exploding with flavor, thanks to the mustardy-mayo Goop holding the large burger together. Wash your burger down with the tasty and hard-to-find RC Cola, on tap at Helvetia.

The building that houses the Helvetia first opened in 1914 as a general store. In 1946 a bar was added to one side and burgers were served. Mike’s father, Nick Lampros, bought the tavern in 1978 and changed nothing until the late 1990s when he and his son turned the old general store into a dining room. “Up until then it was a twenty-one-and-over bar crowd,” Mike told me, taking a break from the grill. “The dining room allowed us to start attracting families.” And they do, and those families have the benefit of dining at Helvetia with a picture-perfect view of the sheep grazing across the street. The dining room tables are actually enormous foot-thick blocks of timber with a high-gloss finish. Mike pointed out, “They came from a tree that fell in a neighbor’s yard.”

The tavern side of Helvetia is a comfortably dark, broken-in bar with a 1950 Brunswick pool table that still costs only a quarter to play. A strange collection of baseball caps hangs from the ceiling, some signed by pro athletes. Mike explained that the thousand of caps were up there to hide the ugly ceiling. “We take them down twice a year to clean them.”

If there was any doubt as to how accommodating this place was to regulars, just take a counter seat at the last stool in the back of the restaurant. That’s Grant’s seat. Then look over the food prep area directly in front of you. Hanging on an air duct is a mirror positioned perfectly to read the TV behind you in reverse. “He comes in here at three everyday, like clockwork,” the grillman told me. Then Mike explained, “We blocked his view of the TV across the room with a new sign. This was his solution.”

 

 

O
nce upon a time in America, the “sports bar” was merely a neighborhood bar where you could guarantee that the game you wanted to watch would be on the TV hanging in the corner over the bottles of booze. If there were two games on at the same time, the TV at the other end of the bar would be tuned in. At some point, the sports bar concept went corporate and today it is not uncommon to find many with stadium seating and games on up to 30 screens, some of them fullsized movie screens. The sports bar became a soulless, unfamiliar place where the only reason to go was to ensure you’d see your game. Stanich’s is a real sports bar, one that is oozing soul. It’s an unquestionably comfortable, welcoming
place that also happens to make one of the tastiest burgers I’ve ever eaten.

“Sometimes the wait for a burger can be an hour, but we have a great jukebox,” Debbie Stanich told me as she sang along to Sonny and Cher. Debbie manages Stanich’s and is married to Steve Stanich, the owner and son of the couple who opened the tavern in 1949. Serbian immigrants Gladys and George Stanich opened this Portland tavern and put a burger on the menu. “Gladys cooked and George was out back playing pinochle,” Debbie says. It was Gladys who invented what the menu still today bills as the “World’s Greatest Hamburger,” the sloppy two-fister “Special.”

The Special is large. Gladys must have had the very hungry in mind when she dreamed up this burger. The grillperson swiftly assembles the impressively diverse ingredients that go onto the Special, which include a quarter-pound patty of fresh chuck, an egg, bacon, ham, cheese, lettuce, red onion, and tomato. All of this is piled high on a large five-inch toasted bun with the obligatory mustard, mayo, and “burger relish” that seems to adorn all burgers in the Northwest. “There’s no ‘special sauce’ here at Stanich’s, just mayo, mustard, and relish,” Debbie explained.

There’s a two-napkin limit per burger, so use them wisely. The moment the juices, hot cheese, and mayo start running down your arms (and they will) resist the urge to reach for a napkin. “We don’t like to hand out napkins,” Debbie told me, “but if you really need one, okay.”

When you first walk into Stanich’s, you’ll be shocked by the décor. Every inch of the walls at this decades-old tavern is covered in those felt triangular pennants and pretty much nothing else. There could be a thousand, and all were donated by regulars. The bar is one of the deepest I’ve ever seen, lined with cozy leather swivel stools that take practice getting into. There is no way to look cool getting into one of these seats, Debbie pointed out laughing, “It’s kind of a ‘slide ’n twirl’ move,” and as she demonstrated, she looked like she was dancing with an invisible partner.

Steve Stanich, an ex-pro football player for the 49ers, believes in giving back. Among the sea of pennants that lines the walls of his tavern are more than a few accolades of his philanthropic efforts. On the fiftieth anniversary of Stanich’s, Steve brought the price of his family’s signature burger back to its original 25 cents. The proceeds built a gymnasium for a local school. He also sponsors numerous local teams and every year gives out scholarships to college-bound kids. Steve told me, “It comes back to you tenfold.”