Entries tagged with 'Kansas'
Posted by Adam Kuban, May 14, 2008 at 9:45 AM
As ElCapitan points out in an AHT comment, Bobo's Drive-In, one of my favorite burger joints, went in for the star treatment Monday night on Guy Fieri's Food Network show Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives or, as it's sometimes known, DDD.
I'd been on the fence about Fieri since I started watching his show. He sometimes seems to condescend a bit to the TV audience and the folks he's profiling. But after watching him in action at Bobo's, I've come around. He really manages to convey the specialness of this old-school Topeka, Kansas, drive-in burger joint. And when he picked up on my favorite quality of Bobo's burgers—the great crisp crust seared into it on the hot flat top griddle—my reservations slipped away. After the jump, peep the vid.
Continue reading »
Posted by Adam Kuban, August 30, 2006 at 12:45 PM
Wichita, Kansas, blogger Podunk Boy responds on his blog to our earlier post about burgers in the Air Capital:
For those wondering where to get a burger in Wichita:
Ty's Diner
928 W 2nd St.
Takhoma Burger
803 N. West St. or 816 S. Broadway
Oasis Lounge
4121 W Maple St
How was I supposed to know that a post in my little blog would somehow trackback to a New York City burger review site. The Internet sure is a wacky place. Wichita, along with being the birthplace of White Castle and the modern hamburger, still knows how to make a good burger, many with chopped dill pickle relish and fried onions. Even the loose-meat burger at NuWay (several locations) are worth the trip, especially the original one on west Douglas.
Sorry about wine-sipping Gotham pigs thing -- I'm a little protective about the "birthplace of the burger" thing. I feel bad about it, but I never go back and self-edit an entry.
Hey: No offense taken. We've been called worse! And thanks for the recommendations.
oh, no, they did it for hamburgers, too: Comment #1 [Podunk Boy]
Posted by Adam Kuban, August 28, 2006 at 10:30 AM
Ladies and gentlemen, allow us to serve you a new treat. We call it Grilled. Each week, A Hamburger Today will sit down with a notable burger lover and run him or her through the grinder. The result, we hope, is a meaty blend of fun and information. I'm proud to say that this, the inaugural installment of Grilled, features my very own sister. She's the general manager of Sonic Drive-In No. 3454 in Spring Hill, Kansas. Without further ado, let's get Grillin' ... —Ed.
Name: Krista Kuban
Location: Overland Park, Kansas
Occupation: General manager of Sonic Drive-In No. 3454; Spring Hill, Kansas [map]
How long have you worked at Sonic and in what capacities?
This June marked my ten-year anniversary. I started when I was 15; it was my first part-time job. I began as a carhop to earn extra money and continued carhopping throughout college. After graduating, I carhopped while looking for a job using my degree. Nothing suited me or even came close to what I enjoyed doing, which was Sonic.
When I moved to Arizona, I transferred to a store there. They saw what a super Sonic employee I was and asked me to try management. In less than a year, I was promoted from regular employee to assistant manager, to contract manager. At that point, I was ready to become a general manager. I returned to Kansas, where my original boss, who now supervises my store, offered me a location to manage. Now here I am, general manager of a Sonic Drive-In.
How often do you eat burgers?
This may sound gross, but probably at least three or four times a week. [Um, that's nothing in AHT-World. —Ed. ]
Where did you eat your most recent one?
At work, Sonic, of course!
Cheese: American, cheddar, other?
American. I'm picky.
Ketchup or mustard?
Heinz 57 Ketchup or NOTHING.
Sesame seed or plain?
Plain as plain can be.
And how would you like that done, miss?
Slightly pink, medium.
Would you do us the favor of describing your perfect burger? Price and ingredients are no object.
I may be small, but I like giant burgers. Slap another patty on there, and make it a double! A thick, juicy hamburger, with a slice of American cheese below the patty, a slice of American cheese on top. I eat my burgers with ketchup, but instead of putting the ketchup on the burger, I dip the burger in the ketchup. That's it, nothing else. Like I said, I'm a picky eater.
What topping or condiment, in your opinion, should never grace a burger?
I'm not a burger snob. Whatever makes you and your stomach happy. And if you're one of my customers, ask and ye shall receive!
What's the most unusual burger you've ever eaten? (Or most unusual burger experience you've had?)
Picky is as picky does—no strange burgers for me, but Sonic comes up with some unique burgers. There was the popular Island Fire Burger with spicy habanero sauce and pepper Jack cheese. Right now we're featuring the Spicy Southwest SuperSonic Cheeseburger with creamy chipotle sauce and pepper Jack cheese, topped with crunchy breaded jalepeño strips. [I've been intrigued by the commercials for this one. Breaded pepper strips ... mmm. —Ed.]
At Sonic, you started off as carhop. Did you ever wear rollerskates?
I sure did and sometimes still do! They had to coax me at first, but once I got the hang of it, it was nearly impossible to get me outta those things! When I worked in Arizona, I was a certified trainer, meaning I was paid to travel and open new stores, training employees to be skating carhops. You could say that's my specialty!
Does Sonic bring the food to your car on trays that clip to the vehicle window? If so, how do you signal to the carhop that you're done eating?
Sonic does still use the "red curb trays" that hook onto your vehicle's window. If the customer desires, the carhop will place the tray on the window for them. It's not a frequent request, but one we will fill. Customers are encouraged to press the red speaker button if they are in need of anything, but we also have our "Smile Tray" (a courtesy-type deal with extra condiments and such), which circles the building in the hands of a smiling carhop every ten minutes. Many times, customer requests are filled by that carhop.
What's the most overrated burger in your city? Most underrated?
I know that Town Topic supposedly has great hamburgers, though I've never eaten there. It's always packed, no matter what time of day it is. Fred P. Ott's gets quite a few votes, but I'm not a big fan; the ambiance fizzles rather than sizzles.
###
BURGER JOINTS REFERENCED
Sonic Drive-In: Various locations nationwide; sonicdrivein.com
Town Topic: Two locations—2021 Broadway, Kansas City MO; and 1900 Baltimore Ave., Kansas City MO
Fred P. Ott's: 1111 Main St., Kansas City MO; fredpotts.com
FURTHER READING
Other Grilled interviews [AHT archives]
Posted by Adam Kuban, August 24, 2006 at 4:20 PM
Just found this post on a board at Radio Gods Forum:
a hamburger today: but somehow they've missed Wichita so far. Elitist wine-sipping Gotham pigs...
Podunkboy [yes, that's the handle he posts under], never fear. My parents are moving to Wichita in a few weeks. I'll be visiting in December. Wichita will no longer be ignored by AHT. In fact, we hear you've got some fantastic burgers there. Can you recommend any?
oh, no, they did it for hamburgers, too. [radiogodsforum.com]
Cheeseburger paradise? You're in it [Wichita Eagle]
Posted by Adam Kuban, May 23, 2006 at 2:30 AM
This is the second of two belated Kansas posts from December 2005. The first can be found here: Bobo's Drive-In.
THE COZY INN
Location: 108 North 7th Street, Salina KS 67401 [map]
Phone: 785-825-2699
Website: cozyburger.com
Cost: 75¢ each
The Short Order: Sliders here are juicy, steamy, and mega-oniony. Don't act a fool and ask for cheese; Cozy don't play that. And, oooh, that smell — it will saturate your clothes. Bonus: Plenty of cool Cozy merch available
You Want Fries With That? You can't always get what you want. Grab a bag of chips as a side; Cozy doesn't do fries
One hundred fifty miles east of Salina, Kansas, and the onion smell lingered on. Like the smoke from a dive bar in which cigarettes are still legal, the pungent fumes clung to my clothes and hair. Nearly three hours' road time behind me, the lights of my hometown on the horizon, and tears began to pool in my eyes: Did I already miss that cozy little burger joint out west or ... "J.B., CLOSE THAT DAMN BAG! I CAN'T TAKE THAT AROMA!"
My traveling companion, J.B., had just opened the gallon-size zip-top bag (right) containing a souvenir of our trip to The Cozy Inn. Despite being locked tight inside the sealed plastic, the commemorative T-shirt had nevertheless absorbed a concentrated dose of the Cozy's signature smell. (To re-create this odor at home: Go to your spice drawer, open the bottle of dried minced onions you never use, and snort the contents.)
While it may sound unappetizing, I think it's precisely that smell that beckons burger lovers both near and far to the Cozy Inn, filling their nostrils and noggins with a healthy dose of nostalgia. Need evidence? Look no further than the three-ring binder full of testimonials from devotees. It's kept on the counter, letters slipped into plastic sleeves for their own protection:
Yeah, you read that right: 1929. This place has been a Salina institution since 1922. Check out the neon sign in the photo at right: 83 years (as of December 2005) and counting — the sign's neon gets reworked each year.
Despite an outsize sense of history, the burgers themselves are anything but large. The Cozy specializes in sliders. And though they come with a heaping throw of onions (no exceptions), they absolutely do not come with cheese. A word to those who are weak of stomach: This is not your restaurant. If nowhere else, Cozy's sliders have earned the right to be called belly bombers or gut busters.
While the strong onion dosage is a selling point, it can at times overwhelm these tiny hamburgers. And the water content of the aromatic slices can sometimes further mush-ify the small buns that are already moist with steam, having been placed atop the patties as they cook on the diminutive 18-by-36-inch cast-iron grill. About the grill: It was replaced at some point during the 1940s but the demanding clientele had a conniption and the owner quickly reinstalled the original.
As of publication, single burgers cost 75¢ but a patron with a good appetite should start with a half dozen. Or, if you're there with kids in tow, as were many of Salina's natives the evening AHT visited, you'd do well to order a sack of 30 for the family. It's never too early to start instilling a good measure of oniony nostalgia in today's youth.
Posted by Adam Kuban, May 22, 2006 at 12:26 AM
Now it can be told. A full five months afterward. Yeah, I know. I've got a whole backlog of burger posts burnin' a hole in my pocket, and it's high time I started slogging-blogging through them. This is the first of two belated Kansas posts from December 2005.
BOBO'S DRIVE-IN
Location: 2300 SW 10th Ave., Topeka KS 66604 [map]
Phone: 785-234-4511
Short Order: Fresh, not frozen. Coarse grind. Thin patties with a salty crisp exterior. Make yours a double
You Want Fries With That? Beats me. We didn't try them. So sue me. Onion rings are an option — always a plus in the AHT scorebook
You see, I wanted to visit a burger joint my friend Jeremy S. had been telling me about for years: The Cozy Inn, located in Salina, Kansas. So I rustled up another old friend, JB, and headed west. But this story is not about Cozy. That's because somewhere just east of Topeka and still about a hundred miles east of Salina, memories of a tasty drive-in burger stand in the state's capital came rushing back. We called Caterina, a native Topekan, and got some last-minute directions to Bobo's Drive-In.
Cat, an old college friend, had taken me to Bobo's long ago on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Bobo's, she said, was straight outta Alice, the kinda place where the waitresses called you "hon," with no-nonsense diner food and amazing burgers. She was right—about the waitresses and the burgers. But that was in 1996, and I wanted to see, 10 years later, if the burgers were as good as I remembered.
Bobo's is a drive-in. AHT readers who are too young, have not seen American Graffiti, or who are not lucky enough to live near one might need an explanation. At such an establishment, you drive up, park at a stall, and turn on your headlights to grab the attention of a carhop (though retro drive-ins such as Sonic may have individual speaker boxes to facilitate ordering). The carhop takes your order and, some time later, brings your meal to you on a tray that attaches to your window (right). When you're good and grubbed up and ready to roll, you flip on your lights again to get the carhop to take the tray away. (I sound like a drive-in expert, eh? Naw. I totally didn't know about the headlight thing until our carhop explained it to us.)
JB and I knew we'd be eating sliders at Cozy Inn in a couple of hours, so we each ordered a single cheeseburger and a Coke after perusing the menu:
Kansas is a state that knows beef. It's a state that knows a good burger. As such, a lot of these small establishments know better than to use frozen beef. Bobo's is no exception. Here was an irregularly shaped patty of fresh beef with a crisp salty crust and juicy soft interior, topped with a thick slice of oozy American cheese. Lettuce and tomato were crisp and cold, adding an extra bit of crunch to the experience while the plain white hamburger bun couched it all in pillowy softness.
The patties are a bit too thin for my taste and were slightly overwhelmed by the rest of the ingredients. I'd suggest ordering a double cheeseburger, which should bring the whole sandwich into proper bun-to-beef alignment. Other than that, the Bobo is good to go.
Hours are 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday; 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; closed Sunday. Just don't forget to turn your lights on.
MORE PHOTOS
Bobo's Drive-In on Flickr
Posted by Hamburglar Hadley, June 20, 2005 at 3:00 PM
KANSAS CITY
There's very little the intrepid reporters at A Hamburger Today wouldn't do for our readers, just as there's very little I wouldn't do just to spend a minute or two with the gorgeous though notoriously less photogenic AHT editrix Honey P. When I caught wind that Honey P. was spending her Memorial Day weekend in Kansas City, I immediately set out to the shoulder of the 101 freeway with my thumb out in hopes of meeting her there for just one burger.
After a cross-country hitchhike filled with trials, tribulations, and increasingly anti-evolutionary zealots, I finally arrived on Honey P's second-to-last day in The K.C. to catch her working her way to Winstead's, one of Kansas City's oldest and most famous burger spots.
Winstead's is as classic a burger joint as Kansas City has. An albino diner complete with jukebox, counter, and leather-clad booths, it's in the '50s style, evoking that treasured golden age of burgers, though the chain dates back to the '40's.
I liked what Winstead's was cookin'. To start off, Honey P. recommended a cherry limeade, her beautiful light-brown eyes catching the Midwest sunlight like the fields of wheat that surrounded us. Skyscraper shakes that can satisfy 5 or 6 people were also available, but alas, two is the second loneliest number that there ever was. After placing our order for burgers, the limeades arrived like nothing I've ever seen before; an unnatural
light-green elixir topped with sherbet and a bright-red maraschino cherry (right). Delish, I must proclaim, but not too soon, as it was quickly burgertime. Our burgers were slid in front of our eager mouths along with the kick-butt option of half-fries, half-onion rings. The rings were excellent, but the fries just ho-hum, Kansas speak for sucked.
But those burgers—what a trip! Emerging with a look like that of any other burger, closer inspection revealed that the Winstead burger's all-steak patty was paper-thin. It was lightly crisp and spread itself over the generic bun. Almost resembling some sort of hash brown, this coarsely ground patty looked like a sandwich with thinly sliced meat resting between the breaded sheets.
Stunningly lovely Honey P. wondered if Earth's original burgers wer more akin to Winstead's than the huge greasy meat sponges we've come to expect, and I surely felt the unique blend of jive she was talkin'. Biting into the thin burger, I was pleasantly surprised that the taste was not affected by these dimensions. My razor-thin cheeseburger, with grilled onions, pickles, lettuce (though, yes, we have no tomaters), and the usual condiments, was as delicious as any regular burger I've had, leaving me without the typical guilt of having eaten half a heifer for lunch. The beef was crisp on the outside, but soft in the middle, with a great grilled flavor permeating its slightly juicy being. I could have gone for another even, so light and delicious was Winstead's offering.
After hitting the solid movie Crash (featuring several star-studded, intertwining vignettes on Angeleno race relations) in the afternoon to bridge our two disparate (and in my case desperate) worlds of New Yorker and Californian, Desi and Irish-Pollock, we celebrated our common bond of burger lovin'. Though the incomparable good looking lass that is Honey P did not approve of my loudly calling out that Toby Keith is a redneck to the packed theater as his ignorant brand of hate-tunes played overhead, I am hopeful that my dedication to the burger cause, as embodied by my long haul to Kansas, has burrowed a small place in what I know is her perfectly shaped heart. Hitting the flat Kansas highway with my thumb out for multiple rides back to the West Coast, I had a heart full of honey and a belly full of the heartland.
WINSTEAD'S
Location reviewed: 103rd and Metcalf; locations throughout the KC Metro region.
Short Order: Exceptionally thin, coarsely ground sirloin burgers. Some patrons may want to make theirs a double.
Topmost photograph by B. Baltimore Brown
Posted by Honey P., June 20, 2005 at 1:15 PM
KANSAS CITY
Welcome to the The K.C., bitch! Now slide those sliders over, and join us for some super-thin, perfect-in-your-palm burgers whose size and taste would make Wimpy weak in the knees. Slice fans will remember Adam K.'s pizza expedition through the Heartland earlier this year, but that just wasn't enough. After getting punched in the face by bad pizza, the same way Ryan did when Luke famously welcomed him to that other initialled town, I knew justice had to be served. Maybe they can't get that New York–style slice right, but if there's one thing the Kansas City knows, it's beef.
And they've got a local chain there that's refreshingly simple, sweet, and so damn special that I just had to get me a burger from Winstead's over this past Memorial Day weekend.
On learning of my indulgent plan, our resident Hamburglar, Hadley, who, despite his fabulous taste in burgers has off-putting stalkerlike tendencies, decided to show up for my date with a "single Winstead" and medium cherry limeade. (You'll get his take on Winstead's when his entry posts later today.) Being the polite and generous soul that I am and knowing that H.H. just loves a partner in crime, even during the most sinless act of eating hamburgers, I kindly welcomed him to my little slice of burger heaven. Silently, I lamented the private moment me and my Winstead might have shared.
Now don't get it twisted (as my lil' sis, "Money P.," would say), I am not proclaiming this the best burger in the K.C. metro area. Although, you should know that K.C. Citysearch readers have voted this the best burger countless years in a row. I'm just sharing a burger treat with y'all that I find delicious and worth the trip. And, Winstead's has been operating since 1940, when the chain issued its simple mission statement, which still rings true today: "We grind U.S. Choice Steak daily for the sandwich." Hence the name "Steakburger," which you'll see all over the mellow green menu.
This is not your thick-cut, juices-dripping-down-your-hands, char-grilled giant of a burger. Like I said before, think Wimpy—a cartoonish version that he could polish off in a few giant bites. This is the fresh and flavorful direction McDonald's should have taken. The composition, a soft golden bun and meat so thin that its outer edges cook to a nearly deep-fried crispness, is a winning combo.
I chose mine with "everything," which includes mustard, ketchup, raw onion slices, and pickles of the Vlasic kind rather than Klausen brand, sliced lengthwise to cover the span of the patty. However, Winstead's aims to please, which is why it also offers cheese, lettuce, tomato, and bacon for a few extra cents and mayo or grilled onion at no extra charge. Make it a "double" or "triple" and you're still under $4.
I'll let H.H. get into the sides and soda fountain drinks, but before I leave you with a craving, you should also know that no burger here is complete without an order of onion rings. No signs of grease, just crispy morsels of crunch surrounding a mere shave of onion. I'm still dreaming about them. Joined by such creative frozen concoctions as banana split or mint-chocolate-chip milkshakes, you'd be hard pressed to find a more balanced meal.
My satiated self and an overwhelmed H.H. marveled at the lip-smacking lunch we had just shared. In the end I didn't regret his intrusion. After all, what kind of person would I be if I kept such treasures to myself?
WINSTEAD'S
Location reviewed: 103rd and Metcalf; locations throughout the KC Metro region.
Short Order: Exceptionally thin, coarsely ground sirloin burgers. Some patrons may want to make theirs a double.
