Hamburger America (18 page)

Cliff Taylor purchased the franchise for the third Maid-Rite in Iowa for $300 and called it Taylor’s. His son, Don Taylor, took over the business in 1944. In 1958, Taylor’s moved across the street into a new modern building, its current location. Cliff Taylor’s granddaughter, Sandy, remembers the move well. “We moved the entire contents of the restaurant overnight making trips back and forth across the street. I remember helping to carry the plates.” One element of the move that didn’t work out so well was the new steam cooker. “My dad thought the meat just didn’t taste right so he brought the cooker over from the old place,” Sandy told me. “This could be the same cooker from 1928,” Sandy said, pointing to the strange stainless cabinet with the deep, cast-iron trough.

Taylor’s is a bright, clean, friendly place with floor-to-ceiling windows in the front of the restaurant. A large horseshoe counter surrounds a short-order kitchen that offers amazing views of your food being prepared. One wall of the restaurant is covered with enormous world and U.S. maps with the phrase above, “Go ’round the world, but come back again.”

Unlike other Maid-Rites in the well-known Midwestern franchise, Taylor’s has kept things simple. The other Maid-Rites offer everything from roasted chicken and corn dogs to tacos. At Taylor’s, a loosemeats sandwich has always been the solitary sandwich on the short menu.

The loosemeats sandwich may be some of the fastest food you’ll ever come across because the meat is already cooked and warm. An order can arrive at your spot at the counter in under a minute. Unwrap and sink your teeth into one of the softest, tastiest sandwiches around and you’ll start wondering why the rest of the country has not caught on yet.

One time when I visited the Central Iowa eatery there was a debate going on about the proposed introduction of ketchup, not to the sandwich, but to the counter. The sign out front announced STOP IN VOTE YES OR NO FOR KETCHUP. The votes were tallied, and in August 2006, ketchup was introduced to the counter, 77 years after opening day.

Sandy retired from a job as a schoolteacher in North Dakota only to return home and find herself drawn to Taylor’s. Her son, Don Taylor Short, was looking to move on after 20 years managing the popular loosemeats institution and Sandy agreed to jump in. “This is my retirement!” she told me laughing. She’s there every day and makes a point to warn customers about the pitfalls of the metal cup that holds your “extra” milkshake. “You need to stir it before you pour it,” she reminds me. “Someone dumps their shake on the counter everyday.”

 

 

B
obo’s is one of only a handful of original drive-ins in America still using carhops. That’s right, the ones who come to your car, take your order, then come back with food and clip a tray onto your car door. Sonic may have capitalized on the modern version of the drive-in, but there’s still nothing like an original one-of-a-kind like Bobo’s.

At one point there were two Bobo’s Drive Ins in Topeka. The one remaining opened in 1953. The first location was opened just a few blocks away in 1948 by Orville and Louise Bobo. “Mrs. Bobo still comes in and buys pies two to three times a week,” Kim, a former carhop told me. Bobo’s is now owned by Richard Marsh who recently purchased the drive in from Bob Humes. He is only the third owner in the restaurant’s more than six decades in operation. Richard bought Bobo’s and all of the secret recipes in 2007 and kept everything pretty much the same.

Bobo’s plays the part of the mid-century American road icon with a neon tower shooting out of its roof and a large arrow pointing the way. There are twelve stalls for cars and two carhops
during the day running orders and food back and forth from the kitchen to waiting drivers. You can see why so many fast-food restaurants moved to the economical drive-thru; the drive-in is without question a lot more work.

The burgers at Bobo’s are excellent. They start as fresh ground 85 percent lean one-eight-hounce patties and are cooked on a superhot flattop griddle, pressed flat. “You don’t always get a perfect circle,” grill cook Robert admitted. The thin patty is sprinkled with salt and pepper, then griddled until crunchy on the outside but perfectly moist inside.

A strange burger creation proprietary to Bobo’s competes equally with their flavorful double cheeseburger—the “Spanish Burger.” What’s on the Spanish? “Spanish sauce,” Jonette told me bluntly. Turns out, the Spanish sauce is a tangy, sweet tomato sauce. Just then, someone sat down and ordered one. “You see? We sell as many of them as cheeseburgers.”

Not to be missed are the onion rings. I mean it when I say that these were probably the best I’ve ever eaten. I still think about that inviting pile of not-too-greasy gnarled, deep-fried onions. I couldn’t stop eating them. Homemade root beer is also a draw.

Jonette knows just about everyone who drives up or walks in the door. “For a lot of people who pull in here,” Jonette said, “we can have their order on the grill before they even tell us.” Now there’s a perk that could lure you to Topeka.

 

 

T
he Cozy Inn is a classic well-preserved hamburger stand built in 1922 in Salina, Kansas. Not surprisingly, the Cozy, with its six white-painted steel stools and short counter, was modeled after the successful White Castle hamburger chain. In 1921, only one year earlier in nearby Wichita, a man named Walt Anderson had opened the first White Castle: it was to become the first hamburger chain in America. In the next few years the White Castle model, a clean, small stand serving wholesome burgers, would be copied by entrepreneurs all over the country. The secret ingredient to White Castle’s success was chopped onions that, when cooked with the burger, created an intoxicating smell that drew customers from near and far. Bob Kinkel, an amateur baseball player from Salina, liked what he saw (and smelled) and immediately opened the Cozy Inn.

On one of my visits to Cozy, a woman sitting at the counter named Phyllis told me, “My father built this place for Bob—$500 turnkey.” This would have been a bargain even by 1922 standards, with the possible exception that the place is incredibly small. It takes only a few people to fill up the low-ceilinged burger joint, so understandably, a line builds quickly outside at lunchtime.

To sit and watch the grillman at work is a treat. He stands in front of a smallish recessed griddle that has room for 60 of the aromatic sliders for which the Cozy has become famous. A steam cloud envelops his head as he flips row after row of the small onion-covered burgers. The cloud fills the tiny restaurant with an aroma so thick your eyes will tear and make your clothing smell for days. It’s an oniony goodness that once saturated thousands of burger stands just like the Cozy Inn from the 1920s to the 1950s. Today Cozy is one of only a handful of its kind still in operation.

So now you’re thinking, can I get a slider without onions? No. For over 80 years the same sliders have been sold at Cozy. If you don’t like onions, you won’t like their burgers. But if you do, you’ll be in heaven. A burger “all the way” comes with ketchup, mustard, pickle, and a pile of steam-cooked onions. Today you can choose any combination of these condiments, but in the old days you had no choice—a burger at the Cozy came “all the way” and that was that. And for all of these decades, cheese has never graced a burger at Cozy, so don’t even ask. “It’s amazing how many people come in here and ask for a cheeseburger,” former manager Nancy Durant once told me, “even though we have ‘no cheese’ signs everywhere.” No fries either. Grab a bag of chips at the counter.

The burgers are small, so order a bunch. A familiar call from a customer might be, “A sack and a pop, please,” which is local vernacular for, “six sliders and a soda to go.”

“We roll our own meat here,” Nancy said, referring to the one-ounce wads of fresh bull beef that make up a Cozy slider. The tiny stand will go through 500 pounds of onions and an incredible 1,000 pounds of meat a week. “On our 80th anniversary we sold 8,800 burgers in three days,” Nancy boasted. The buns, soft and pillowy, are made especially for the Cozy Inn and come all the way from Missouri.

For the first time in almost 90 years a second Cozy Inn location is opening. The lucky college town of Manhattan, Kansas will soon be able to indulge in a sack and and a pop.

On my first visit to the Cozy Inn, I was walking out, reeking of onions, and an older woman on her way in stopped me and excitedly asked, “Was it as good as you remembered?” Now that’s the kind of sentiment the Cozy deserves.