Hamburger America (45 page)

“It’s a bar, but people don’t come in here to drink. They come in here to eat,” Debbie pointed out. Or maybe for a burger and a scholarship ? It all sounds good to me.

 

 

I
f you prefer your burgers with ketchup, Charlie’s is the place to go. A “loaded” burger at this decades-old hamburger spot comes with onions, ketchup, pickles, relish, and cheese, creating a sweet burger experience that is hard to find among the more staid and traditional burger stands of America. “Pretty much everyone orders them that way,” a teenaged prep girl told me. She wasn’t kidding—just about every person who walked in during the hour I spent at Charlie’s ordered burgers with ketchup. Of course the burgers can also be ordered with mustard and tomato, but not lettuce.

Charlie’s is a real place with real food. A menu of hamburgers, hot dogs, and milkshakes keeps things simple. Some may see a greasy spoon. Others see a haven for grease lovers. You get the point—this is not health food. Fortunately, the burgers are made from fresh-ground chuck (pattied in the kitchen with a small patty former) and the shakes are made with great ice cream and real milk. In fact, people frequent Charlie’s more for its shakes then for its burgers. The milk for the shakes still comes out of a large vintage aluminum milk dispenser.

The crowd is a mix of airport employees from nearby Philadelphia International, kids from the local schools, and a blend of salty regulars. When I visited, the better part of a girls volleyball team had landed in search of nourishment.

Charlie’s location is relatively new, though the business dates back to 1935. Charlie Convery operated the restaurant nearby at an intersection of the Baltimore Pike until 1984, when an expansion of the road spelled the end of Charlie’s. Through a confusing set of purchases and sales, the restaurant relocated a mile away to a former fruit stand next to a defunct miniature golf course (the concrete skeleton of the weeded-over course is still visible behind the restaurant).

Colorful character and part-time manger of 11 years Mike Goodwin once explained to me, “After they moved, changed owners, and reopened, they still went back to Charlie’s original butcher.” The small burgers are cooked on a very seasoned flattop griddle, smashed thin, and cooked in the bubbling grease of previous burgers. They are served on a toasted, white squishy bun. “No lettuce, no bacon, no tofu, no pineapple,” Mike joked, emphasizing the simplicity of the burgers at Charlie’s.

One important note: Charlie’s is closed on Tuesdays. In a vestige of wartime America, the restaurant still observes “meatless Tuesdays,” a day that most burger joints closed during World War II for meat rationing. “Are you familiar with Wimpy?” Mike asked me. “I’ll pay you
TUESDAY for a hamburger today?” A lightbulb went off in my head—Wimpy was a lot smarter than I thought.

 

 

F
or years, the incredible ground beef that Tessaro’s used for its burgers came from a butcher shop directly across the street called House of Meats. When the shop closed one day, Kelly Harrington, former part owner of this Pittsburgh burger destination, did what seemed the most sensible—he hired the butcher.

Dominic Piccola, a retired Pittsburgh fireman, is now employed by Tessaro’s as their in-house butcher. He has become their link to hamburger perfection. Six days a week, at 7 a.m., Dominic grinds hundreds of pounds of chuck shoulder for the day’s burgers. “Since I’m the only one grinding, the consistency is always the same,” Dominic told me through his classic fireman’s bushy handlebar moustache.

I was interested in Tessaro’s because of its stellar reputation among hamburger cognoscenti, but it was the method of cooking the burgers that put me on an airplane to Pittsburgh. I had to see for myself the fabled hardwood grill that many had talked about. Unique to the burger world, the hamburgers at Tessaro’s are grilled over a fire made from west Pennsylvania hardwoods, not the charcoal or the blue propane flames that seem standard for indoor flame grilling. Tessaro’s uses a mixture of yellow maple, red oak, and walnut, all indigenous to the area. “We stay away from hickory because it’s too strong,” Kelly pointed out, “and no fruit trees because they are loaded with pesticides.” Hardwoods produce a flame that is far hotter than gas or charcoal. Grillman of 23 years Courtney McFarlane told me, “The fire can get up to 600 degrees in there.”

Courtney invited me into the grill area, a section of the restaurant adjacent to the bar that was once the dance floor and is now a small room with a big picture window. I stood about three feet from the grill and the heat was so intense it felt like my eyebrows were burning right off my face. Every few minutes, Courtney tossed a small cup of water onto the flames and told me, “That’s just to slow the heat down a bit.”

The burgers at Tessaro’s are unmeasured but somewhere near a half pound. Courtney grabs a wad of Dominic’s fresh ground beef and tells me, “After a while it’s easy to guess the size.” He then swiftly forms the ball into a patty, slaps the beef onto a stainless steel surface next to the grill, and does this move where he spins the patty to form an edge. The entire process takes seconds. He is a master burger maker and the finished product strangely resembles a large, machined-pressed patty.

The burgers are served with many cheese options and just about any condiment you can think of from barbecue sauce to three types of mustard. To be honest, this burger is so amazing it’d be foolish to cover it with anything. Served on a soft, Portuguese-type roll from a bakery down the street, the hefty burger is a sight to behold. It’s perfectly charred on the outside and juicy and moist on the inside. And thanks to the hardwood, the burger has a taste like no other—a woodsy, barbeque essence that manages not to overpower the flavor of the high-quality beef.

In 1984, Kelly, his sister, Ena, and their mother, Tee, bought the bar and restaurant from
Richard Tessaro. It was Richard who began the tradition of flame grilling burgers that the Harringtons perfected. He started by grilling on the street in front of the bar on a makeshift barbeque made from halved 55-gallon drums. He eventually moved the operation to the backyard, once starting a fire that burned part of the building and finally moved the grill indoors.

The restaurant is dark and cozy with a long vintage bar running along one side. The walls are wood paneled and the aroma of the burning hardwoods is arresting. The building has been a bar for 75 years, but previously housed a dry goods store and a nickelodeon as far back as the turn of the century.

In 2009, Kelly passed away due to complications from cancer and a stroke. His imprint on the burger business was enormous and he will surely be missed.

Ena once told me that if they run out of ground beef on a busy night, they’ll call Dominic the butcher back in to grind some more. I asked her why the burgers were so good and she told me bluntly, “Not everybody can afford a butcher.”

 

 

S
tanley’s is an absolute gem of a burger destination in a neighborhood about 10 minutes north of downtown Providence. The tiny restaurant is so picture perfect that it looks completely out of place in an area that has clearly seen better days. From my experience there’s usually only one reason burger joints like Stanley’s survive—someone came along and saved the place. That’s exactly what happened and we should all be thankful.

Meet Gregory Raheb, a man who bought a fading diner and didn’t simply grab the keys and continue making burgers. He actually gutted the entire place at one point and rebuilt to exact specifications and amazing detail, sending the décor back to opening day in 1932. “When I took over it was rundown,” Greg remembered. “It had dark wood paneling and old vinyl floor tiles. But the food was great so I knew it had potential.” The centerpiece of the menu then as it is now is the Depression-era American standard in hamburgers—one that is loaded with onions.

The “Stanleyburger” is a classic. Not in the bloated half-pound-lettuce-tomato sense but something closer to the birth of the hamburger in America. In the beginning, burgers were small.
The patties were anywhere from 1 to 2 ounces and almost always loaded with steam grilled onions. The Stanleyburger is a perfect nod to the past and a primary example of burgers from the first half of the twentieth century. As you step out of your car in the lot next door you are immediately enveloped in the intoxicating essence of grilled onions pouring from the restaurant’s exhaust. It is a sign of good things to come.

The burger to get is the double Stanleyburger, or two of them. The burgers start as fresh-ground beef that is machine-formed at the restaurant into “plugs,” or tiny two-ounce tall patties. The wad of beef is tossed on the flattop and a pile of paper-thin Spanish onion is thrown on top. With great force the onions are smashed into the burger and the whole comingled mess cooks to perfection. When the patty is flipped, the bun is placed on top to steam. The same practice of smashing onions can be found at primary source burger joints across America, and personally it is my favorite way to enjoy a hamburger. Places like the White Manna, Cozy Inn, and Town Topic, as well as all of the burger joints in El Reno, Oklahoma are still making burgers this way.

If you ask for a double, watch what happens. The grillperson takes two wads of beef and presses them together on the griddle. Cheese is available and it seems that ketchup rules the counter at Stanley’s, but neither is necessary. This little burger, thanks to equal amounts of beef and onion, absolutely explodes with flavor. “Some people ask for extra onions,” longtime manager and counter person Nancy told me.