Hamburger America (60 page)

The Plaza has been a bar for over a century, with a stint as a speakeasy during Prohibition. In 1963 Mary and Harold Huss bought the bar and introduced their burger. Mary concocted the now-famous sauce and placed her burger on a half-wheat bun that is still used today.

Dean started working at the Plaza in 1980 in hopes that one day he might own the place. “I figured that if I stuck around long enough . . .” His patience paid off, and in 2003 the second generation of the Huss family sold Dean the tavern—and the recipe for the secret sauce. “I have a great photo of me handing Tom Huss the check and he’s handing me the recipe,” Dean told me laughing. “It almost looks like we are in a tug-of-war.” That recipe now rests in a safe deposit box, and in Dean’s head. “My wife knew the recipe, but it’s been five years since she’s made the sauce. I’ll bet she forgot.”

The menu at the Plaza is limited to things you might eat while drinking, i.e. “bar food.” Hot dogs and a fishwich are available, but you’d be wise to indulge in a few Plaza Burgers. They also serve one of my favorite sides, a not-to-be-missed treat of the upper Midwest, the fried cheese curd. Imagine a rustic, homespun version of the processed mozzarella stick and you’ll get the picture. Impossibly good, these deep-fried, random-sized wads of breaded fresh cheese are worth every calorie.

The Plaza sits on a bizarre little street near the state’s capitol building and among the bustling stores catering to Madison’s large student population. “There’s so little parking out front,” Dean mused, “so it’s amazing that so many people find
their way here.” Dean has noticed, in his nearly three decades at the tavern, students turn into alumni and continue to patronize the Plaza. “It’s the sauce that brings them back.”

 

 

F
or the burger purist and lover of the things that make America unique, a visit to Solly’s is imperative. Pure and simple, Solly’s serves one of the last real butter burgers in the nation. When I say “real” I’m referring to the copious amounts of creamy Wisconsin butter that is used on their burgers, as opposed to what their surrounding competition calls a butter burger. To everyone else who peddles this great Wisconsin treat, the burger bun is coated with a thin swipe of butter, much in the way you might butter your toast if you were on a diet. Solly’s dramatically bends the rules and treats the butter as a condiment. In other words you actually won’t believe how much butter goes on the burger. The first time I visited Solly’s, I stood and watched that which I had only heard about from disbelieving past patrons. Could they really use upwards of two to three tablespoons of butter on one smallish cheeseburger? Oh yes, they do, and have been for over 70 years.

I kid you not when I say that a butter burger at Solly’s, as gross as it may sound, is an absolutely sublime experience in the gastronomic fabric of America and should be experienced by all. You may also catch yourself doing what I did subconsciously on my first visit—dipping the last bite of your burger back into the pool of butter on your plate. You quickly discover that whatever guilt you harbored while taking your first bite has dissolved by your last.

In 1936 Kenneth Solomon bought Bay Lunch in Milwaukee a clean sixteen-stool diner that served coffee, hamburgers, and bratwurst, and changed the name to his own. In 1971, he relocated Solly’s Coffee Shop a few miles north to the Milwaukee suburb of Glendale. He left the restaurant to his second wife, Sylvia, and she in turn sold the business to her son and current owner Glenn Fieber.

The cheery and cherubic Glenn, fresh from a successful construction business, was faced with an unusual dilemma early in his ownership—move or perish. In 2000, the city government actually assisted Glenn in moving the entire restaurant a few hundred yards south to make way for, of all things, an outpatient heart clinic.

The interior of Solly’s is a comfortable blend of yellow Formica horseshoe counters, swivel stools, and wood paneling. As they have been for decades, the burgers, fries, and shakes are all prepared in view of the counter patrons.

The fresh-ground 3-ounce thin patties show
up at Solly’s daily and are cooked on a large flattop griddle. The toasted buns are standard white squishy, but a soft “pillow” bun is also offered. There are many burger combinations and sizes (like the impressive two-patty “Cheese Head” that an ex-Navy Seal friend of mine devours with ease), but I suggest doing what my good friend and butter burger devotee Rick Cohler has been doing for over 50 years at Solly’s—just order a butter burger.

Rick introduced me to Solly’s. On our first visit together he begged me to try a burger “without” which is a burger on a bun with butter only, no onions. I obliged and immediately understood what all the fuss was about. As you bite into a freshly built butter-burger you actually have the opportunity to experience the texture of soft butter before it melts into a pool on your plate. Unlike Rick, my “usual” at Solly’s is a burger with onions. The stewed onions at Solly’s are like none other I have experienced. They are both sweet and salty, and full of flavor. I could eat a bowl of them with a spoon.

Glenn is one of my truest allies in the burger world. He understands his place in American history and his duty to supply hungry burger lovers with a treat as unique as the butter burger.

 

 

S
omewhere south of Route 94 on a lonely stretch of highway between Madison and Milwaukee sits a gem of a burger stand. I was tipped off to Wedl’s by good friend and burger icon himself, Glenn Fieber of Solly’s Grille in Glendale, Wisconsin. He told me, “Ya gotta go out there, they are making a great little burger.”

The stand at Wedl’s is actually 8 × 8 feet, which is 65 square feet—small for a place that can move up to 600 burgers on a busy day. When I asked former owner Bill Peterson the size of the minuscule, nearly century-old stand, he went inside the larger adjacent ice cream parlor and produced a tape measure. The parlor, formerly a grocery store and at one time a hat shop, is over 800 square feet larger than the separate stand that sits proudly on the corner. In 1999 the stand was leveled by a reckless drunk driver while two kids were inside flipping patties. Miraculously, the employees survived with only grease burns but parts of the stand were scattered for blocks. The original griddle, a perfectly seasoned, low-sided, cast-iron skillet was recovered from the debris two blocks away. A small hole was patched and it was put back into service. After much cajoling the stand was rebuilt on the same spot. I asked former owner Bill Peterson why he wouldn’t just move the burger operation into the larger ice cream parlor but I knew the answer. “The people of Jefferson won’t allow me to change anything. I can’t break tradition.”

In 2007, Eric and Rosie Wedl became the eighth owners of the burger stand and ice cream parlor after buying the business from the Petersons. As Bill was looking to sell, he asked his faithful 20-year-old burger flipper Bert Wedl if he was interested in buying the place. Bert in turn talked his parents into it, and in doing so he secured his own job and possibly the future of the historic burger stand. And he told me recently, “I hope to take over one day.”

The burger at Wedl’s is a classic one-sixth-pound patty griddled and served on a white squishy bun. Bert grinds chuck steaks in the basement of the parlor, throws in some “secret seasonings” (tastes peppery) and rolls the grind into small golf ball–size balls. The balls are smashed thin on the 90-year-old griddle and cooked until the edges are crispy.

Bert is barely 25 now and has flipped burgers at the tiny stand since he was 15. I couldn’t help but notice that when things got slow behind the grill Bert would step out of the stand and sit on the steps of the ice cream parlor. Do you think he was subconsciously trying to avoid being the next victim of a hit and run? I do.

 

 

T
he first time I visited Zwieg’s, the McDonald’s down the street had just suffered a bad fire. “I swear I didn’t do it!” Mary Zwieg joked. Mary is married to Glenn Zwieg and Glenn’s parents opened this local favorite burger counter in a defunct Bartles-Maguire filling station. It is positioned perfectly at the east end of town and still looks a lot like a vintage gas station, minus the pumps.

Grover and Helen Zwieg (pronounced like “twig”) saw opportunity in converting the station into a hamburger joint to feed the late-night revelers when the bars let out at 1 a.m. “We used to be open until two thirty in the morning, though I don’t know if they remember eating here.” Glenn told me. “Every Sunday night there was a Polka fest in town and they’d all end up here afterwards, still Polka-ing!” In the 1950s, Glenn’s parents added a dining room to the twelve-stool counter and pretty much nothing has changed since. “We did replace the griddle in 1998,” Mary pointed out, but it had been in use for 50 years, since the beginning. It was such a big deal that the replacing of the griddle made the local newspaper.

The Zwiegs are not big on change and their customers are happy about that. They’ve been
using the same butcher for their patties forever and Mary told me, “If they go out of business I don’t know what we’ll do.” The burger starts as a thin one-sixth-pound patty that is cooked on the flattop in full view of the counter patrons. Sliced onion is placed on the patty. When the burger is flipped, the onion is grilled between the griddle and the patty. The patty, with its onion, is transferred to a soft white bun that has been toasted with butter on the griddle. The most popular burger (and the best beef-to-bun ratio) is the double with cheese. Many are ordered with pickles and ketchup, but everyone gets theirs with onions.