Nice burger! Nothing like it I have found so far up here though...

Thanks, Da Beef, for starting another excellent thread. Based on your intel, I pulled off 57 in Paxton yesterday to try Just Hamburgers and really liked it. Crispy burgers can easily be quite dry, especially when combined with bad buns. This one was juicy and flavorful.

I will quibble with your description of the burger being at the $3 price point. The only way to get the burger to $3 is to get a double cheeseburger with extra toppings, like bacon.

Da Beef wrote:Just Hamburgers
Paxton, IL

This little nondescript spot is found about an hour and 45 minutes south of Chicago off I-57. I'd had them on my list for a long time. I found an article on them from 2011 in the 'Paxton Dealer' which says they were celebrating their 40th year of biz. So now they're nearing 45 years. Before its birth as a hamburger stand the building was a meat locker. To this day all the meat used in their burgers is cut by hand and ground on site. The product is, in my opinion, one of the best burgers you'll ever eat at the $3 price point they seek for each one. Not having too big of a menu allows for the specialty of the house to shine. They're only open from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and from 4-7 p.m and you should expect a line when you go. However because they're rightfully expecting everyone to order a burger they stay smashing them even before your order is placed. They say that most weekend days they serve more customers than minutes they're open. I'd put their product in the top half of the spots featured in this post.

The smashed burger gets around: last night's episode of "You Gotta Eat Here!", Canada's counterpart to "DDD" featured The Burger's Priest, a place in Toronto that looks like it would satisfy Beef and his fellow admirers of this style of burger. [I'd link the show's episode, but you can't access it from the States, sorry. So here's a youtube short on the place.

Geo

I had some free time a couple weekends ago - after dropping the girls at the mall in Bloomington, IL. I crossed a smash burger place off my list - Blue Dog Inn in Lincoln, IL. -




How I got here? reading a crapload of menus from different spots each day - Spied on their menu a burger described as:
"Stake & Shake—Split and smashed with 2 slices of American cheese 6.95" - instantly down -

a little dark but I got 1 halfway decent pic.: Stake & Shake -


not as smashed and crisp as I like - but good attempt that has promise, plus with a description like that I could not resisit - (heck, Haynes on Main a couple posts above has let me down as far as lacy edges on occasion) -

Blue Dog Inn
111 S. Sangamon
Lincoln, IL.

http://www.bluedoginn.com/

Ive got 2 more off the radar smash burger spots around Springfield - ill be rolling that way soon -

America's foremost burger expert shows us how to make a Central Illinois style smashed burger on First We Feast's - The Burger Show.

Great show Beef, tnx for the link.

Geo
PS. Who's this guy "Titus" who gets mentioned as the Mid-West Expert?? : )

Green Gables has had a devastating fire. The Pantagraph is reporting that it has been destroyed.

We were fortunate enough to have eaten there for the first time just last month. Green Gables had real character and served an outstanding Smash Burger. A real tragedy.

Hope they're able to rebuild, but even if they do, they'll never recapture the time capsule ambience of the original.

Buddy