Now
that's what a hamburger is supposed to look like.
Having some free time with one son today, I decided to head for Indiana and pursue the authentic, farm country, fresh-meat handmade hamburger. First stop, and as it turned out the only one I needed (I had Miner-Dunn and Schoop's as backups if my first choice was closed on Sunday), was Rene G and Cathy2's find,
Johnsen's Blue Top Drive In in Highland. There's little to add: a deeply satisfying old school burger made of fresh meat and grilled to crispy edges, a wonderful Googie-meets-Wisconsin-hunting-lodge interior, and a darned nice root beer float:
Which my companion
seemed to like:
* * *
This might seem like a mere restaurant report that more properly belongs in the Johnsen's thread linked above, so let me expand upon it to achieve deeper sociological meanings.
Burgers must be hot at the moment; we had Time Out's 55 best last week and in this weekend's Wall Street Journal (not available online except to subscribers, alas) the venerable food writer Raymond Sokolov has a roundup in which, the headline promises, he "takes a cross-country, artery-clogging journey to find burger perfection."
Well, that he took such a journey is undeniable; it doesn't say he
found perfection. Sokolov goes all over the map both literally and burgerologically, trying everything from foie gras burgers to In-N-Out, but one gets the sense that after flying to a few major cities (including Chicago) and trying some high end burgers, he had a queasy sensation that all he'd achieved was a stack of three-figure receipts for burgers he hadn't really liked. He passes condemnation on the excesses of the Daniel Bouluds and Laurent Tourondels of New York (and, along the way, on Rosebud here, whose pretzel-like bun he finds overkill):
Quote:
I do not love these "gourmet" burgers made by men who wear toques blanches instead of T-shirts. Their fancyburgers are as awkward and condescending as pop songs recorded by opera stars... other chefs around the country grind up precious Kobe beef for burgers that just ooze fat and melt weirdly in your mouth. I don't want truffles either...
As I ate burgers from coast to coast, I realized that my passion in this area is a simple, id-driven lust. I love a burger just like the burger I got from dear old Dad. Or with him, in a "bar and grille."
Admirable sentiments; Sokolov is clearly more sensible than his preposterous fellow master of the expense account
John Mariani, whose list of great burger joints would undoubtedly include Boulud's truffle burger if not the one at the men's grill at the Raffles in Singapore. One suspects, though, that by this point the budget is dwindling, the deadline is looming, and Sokolov is having to squeeze burgers in on trips to major cities. The map of burger joints he finds something worthy at is bounded by Red Mill Burgers in Seattle and In-N-Out in California on its west end, Primanti Brothers in Pittsburgh and DB Bistro Moderne on its east end, Nick's Tavern in Lemont (!) and Miller's Bar in Dearborn on its north side, and Dirty's in Austin and Ann's Snack Bar in Atlanta (which turns out to be his best in the US) on its Southern edge.
And in the middle, like a 19th century map of Africa, there appears only a big black spot to indicate unexplored territory. That's right; even Sokolov seems to think he's covered burgers in America
while barely visiting the parts of the country in which cattle are actually raised. (He did go to Texas, true, but he visited the most tofu city in the state.) Let me radio a dispatch from Planet Cluestick to the next journalists to write a piece on the best burgers in America: cattle are raised in states with names like Kansas, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Montana, Wyoming, Missouri and, yes, Indiana. You might want to check some of them out and see if they know a thing or two about eating the meat that they raise, though admittedly, they probably don't have any truffles on hand.
They used 'em up on the last guy's root beer float.
* * *
My companion and I excited a little interest with our picturetaking, our non-smoking, and our general not-from-around-here-ness, and as I snapped a few last shots, one of the guys from the counter was walking through the lot and asked me if I was looking to buy the place. I laughed and explained no, just loved the old time look and feel of these kinds of places. We chatted for a few moments and he expressed some concern-- how much based in actual knowledge, I don't know-- that the Blue Top might not be around forever, given the near-retirement-age proprietors and so on.
So don't wait for the national media to discover where the great burger joints are. They're in every direction from Chicago, wherever cattle are raised. Get in a car and check them out. You'll be happier than Raymond Sokolov was after a dozen truffle and foie gras burgers from a dozen famous chefs.
Johnsen's Blue Top Drive In
8801 Indianapolis Blvd (Route 41)
Highland IN
219-838-1233