Hamburger America (47 page)

The Sioux Falls favorite “Eggburger” is served here—a fried egg is placed on top of a finished burger, the yoke popped and cooked through thanks to health department rules. “Can’t decide on breakfast or lunch? Have an Eggburger!” Maria Poulsen, the current owner, exclaimed when I asked about the origins of the strange pairing of chicken and cow. If you’ve never had one, fear not—the combination works well. It’s basically steak and eggs on a bun.

Many past patrons have fond memories of Mel Nelson, the longtime proprietor of the Hamburger Inn. Sadly, Mel is no longer pressing balls of ground beef into a puddle of grease, cooking burgers the “old-fashioned way.” But the good news is that three months before he died, local chef Maria offered to buy the place. This is always great for the burger world, especially when the plan is to keep a similar menu and scrape up some of the caked-on grease. Maria said, “It was a mess when I took over. Grease up to here!” and she made a gesture about two feet from the floor.

The burgers are no longer cooked in a tray of grease like Mel did for 32 years and previous owners did for close to 75 years. Now, one-third-pound balls of fresh ground beef hit the hot griddle, are flattened with a spatula, and cooked until the fresh meat has an exterior crunch.

The menu at Hamburger Inn is sparse but focused. Burgers are the star attraction here and can be ordered with cheese, bacon, or the aforementioned fried egg. Standards such as onion rings and fries are also on the menu, as is a curiosity called “cheeseballs.” This Midwestern treat is also known as the deep-fried cheese curd, one of my all-time favorite side dishes.

For those old-timers who may miss Mel’s tasty sliders, there is no need to fret about the state of burgers here. The Hamburger Inn is still turning out great burgers and your clothes will still smell of grease all day. Maria also refurbished the decades-old neon-and-glass sign that hangs over the front door, using all of the original lettering. “It was falling apart but I didn’t want to change much,” she told me. In keeping with the integrity of the old place, the Hamburger Inn still looks like a shoebox with a door, a burger bunker whose only window faces 10th Street.

Maria understands good food, service, and simplicity. She runs a catering business in the Sioux Falls area and this is the second restaurant she currently owns. “I’m looking for an old stainless steel diner to buy and fix up,” she said as I was leaving. “Got any ideas?”

 

 

D
ick Fergen is my kind of guy. He left a job in farm management in Texas to return to his hometown of Brookings, South Dakota. Upon his arrival, he inquired about the landmark burger joint, Nick’s, and soon after purchased it from the notorious and sometimes volatile third owner, Duane Larson. In his nearly three decades at the grill, Duane was known to close early because he ran out of buns, and refused to sell the business to just anyone, saying that he’d burn the place down before he sold it to the wrong person. Duane was also involved in a spat between the Coca-Cola Company and Nick’s that led to a dramatic photo in
Time
magazine of Duane pouring Coke into the street.

The good news is that, Dick Fergen is now in charge and he will never run out of buns or Coke. I watched Dick at the grill for one-and-a-half hours, waiting patiently to speak to him. He was in a zone, pressing small balls of ground round into a puddle of bubbling grease, transferring them to buns, and serving them at a rate of about 700 per hour. When I finally got his attention, he was taking a break and eating, not surprisingly, a burger. “I eat mine dry,” he said. This
meant he had squeezed some of the grease out, “Makes it a little bit healthier.” Amazingly, Dick creates his own “solution” for the deep-frying of his burgers. This is not just any old grease. He starts with solids and adds seasoning according to a recipe that has been handed down for decades.

Dick doesn’t really look like your typical hamburger stand owner. He is a sixtysomething, impossibly fit, tanned, and a self-described Harley nut. What brought him to and keeps him at Nick’s is pure nostalgia. Nick’s was started by Harold and Gladys Nickalson in 1929 and was later passed on to their son, Harold Jr., in 1947. When Duane Larson bought Nick’s in 1972, much to the dismay of the old-timers, he added the cheeseburger to the menu. The small burgers come with a secret relish whose recipe goes back to the beginning. It’s a mustard based pickle-and-onion relish that has “other seasonings,” waitress Laurie told me.

Orders are not taken, they are yelled. “We just holler at Dick what we need,” Laurie said. First, you tell the counter person what you want. When your burgers are ready, you tell them what you want on them. They arrive at your counter spot on a square of waxed paper and can be consumed at a rate of roughly one every 20 seconds, which is good, because you will need to make room for the 30 people waiting for your stool.

In 2008 Dick bought the barbershop next door and doubled the size of Nick’s. The new counter wraps around the griddle, which is in the center of the restaurant, and the burger joint can now seat many more hungry burger lovers.

A man named Stewart sitting to my left told me that he had been coming back to Nick’s every time he visited his alma mater, South Dakota State University. “I’ve been coming ever since I graduated in ’52.” Old-timers refer to their visits as getting their “Nick’s fix.”

“If you are not from South Dakota, then you wouldn’t understand.” Dick pondered seriously while gazing at the ceiling. “There’s something about these people. I wouldn’t trade them for anyone in the world.”

 

 

I
t may not look like much, but Brown’s may be one of the most historically significant burger joints in this book. The fact that it survives is a miracle, and a testament to the power of hamburger culture in this country. It has lived through more than one fire and withstood many facelifts.

To the untrained eye, Brown’s appears to be a dump—an unimpressive double-wide with a drab grey/beige exterior. But to American cultural historians it is a treasure. There was a time in this country when hamburgers were not king. They were considered dirty food for wage earners, and were served in establishments much like Brown’s. The only difference is that places like this, which once dotted the Americna landscape in the thousands, and were mostly found in close proximity to factories and urban areas, are just about gone.

What makes Brown’s Diner special is that its core is made up of two retired trolley cars, muledrawn cars that were left at the end of the line in the early 1920s as the automobile became ubiquitous in city life. The trolleys are arranged in a T shape, one making up the bar, the other serving as the kitchen. Terry Young, the bartender and manager, told me, “The wooden wheels are still on it, though I wouldn’t suggest going down there.” The practice of converting trolleys and diner cars
into eating establishments was so popular in the early part of the twentieth century that companies emerged to fabricate the restaurants without the wheels—and the modern diner was born.

Today, Brown’s is a beloved spot in Nashville and has numerous regulars, famous and not. Vince Gill loves the burgers, as do Marty Stuart and Faith Hill, among other members of Nashville’s country elite. Johnny Cash dedicated an album to the place and John Prine was as comfortable there as you will be. According to a regular, Prine was at the bar one night when someone recognized him and put one of his songs on the jukebox. Apparently, Prine stood up and mimicked himself continuing to sing along to his own music and giving the bar patrons a twisted, impromptu karaoke performance.

Randy, a 25-year veteran of Brown’s, told me, “This is a good anti-anorexia place.” I’m assuming he was referring to the gloriously unhealthy menu that includes, beyond burgers, grilled cheese, Frito pie, hush puppies, and a catfish dinner. The only salad on the menu is coleslaw. The burger at Brown’s has been on the menu since it opened in 1927. It’s made from a daily delivery of fresh chuck, hand-pattied to around five ounces. A cheeseburger comes with mayo, tomato, lettuce, and onion on a white squishy bun with pickles speared to the top. If you ask for a cheeseburger, you don’t get mustard. If you ask for a hamburger, you do. I’m confused too—just read the menu and have another Budweiser.

Charlie Brown demonstrates the new “electric” coffeemaker, mid-1930’s.

 

 

N
o hamburger restaurant in America flaunts the method of deep-frying a burger like Dyer’s in Memphis, Tennessee. There are other burgers out there that are cooked in skillets of bubbling proprietary, blended grease, but Dyer’s goes to the extreme and employs a two-foot-wide skillet that I’m guessing holds more than three gallons of grease. But that’s not all. Dyer’s claims the grease has never been changed since the restaurant opened almost a hundred years ago.

I know this sounds nuts, but according to previous owner Tom Robertson, the grease has never been changed, just added to. “We’ll top off the grease but never throw it out and start over,” he told me as I interviewed him for my film,
Hamburger America
. As I sat there in disbelief, he produced one photograph after another documenting the police-escorted moving of the grease from the old location to the new. On some news footage I obtained for the film, you can hear someone say, “As soon as the mayor gets here we’ll go inside and make some lunch!” Now I’ve really seen it all.

The burgers are not deep-fried in just any old grease. Dyer’s uses beef tallow, or rendered beef fat to add to the decades-old skillet. You’d think your burger would emerge from the grease a sludgy disaster, but quite the opposite occurs. The grease of course adds flavor, but the burger turns out being no greasier than a regular, griddled burger. It’s probably because of this that some regulars ask to have their bun dipped, which is where the top half of the bun is returned to the skillet for a dip in the grease.

The method for cooking a burger at Dyer’s is the most peculiar of any burger counter in America. A quarter-pound wad of fresh ground beef is placed on a marble surface. A large spatula rests atop the meat as the cook pounds the beef into a paper-thin patty nearly eight inches wide. The flat beef is then scraped off the surface and slid into the nearby skillet of bubbling, brown grease. Within a minute, the patty floats to the top and it’s done. Ask for cheese and watch what happens. The cook lifts the patty out of the grease with the spatula, places an orange square of American cheese on it, and the patty is quickly dipped back into the grease to melt the cheese.