After a year.
OK.
Fast forward to twenty eighteen. Fast forward to the week in which the Supreme Court upheld the “Muslim Ban” (which affects people) and crippled public sector labor unions (which affects me directly) and, all the while, we’ve got babies in cages (should affect you and if it doesn’t, please die) and the mentally disturbed and racist have access to assault rifles (hope it doesn’t affect anyone you know) and my boss wants to have a sit down with me because I park my bike in the mail room, located off the loading dock. So, yesterday, I took to the streets and joined AFSCME Council 5 to march in the seven thousand strong, three mile long Families Belong Together March - some news outlets referred to it as the Free Our Future March. Google either of them.
I marshaled in the public sector march on Wednesday, too, with support of the Teamsters.
ANYhoo, after a long hard week (which I know as a cis het white man is a million miles better than a Mexican baby’s right now, don’t make this an IDPol thing, please, I can get political on my sandwich blog because it’s mine, I really don’t care… about your shit), I bitched to my old lady and then we set about looking for dinner and I kind of wanted to show her Band Box or Ideal but Band Box was “closing soon” according to Goorgle (a typo I’m letting slide because Goorgle is just more fun) and Ideal was already closed. GF asks if I want diner food and starts looking at her Pocket Goorgle Box and says something about Hi-Lo and then I remember, deep in the recesses of what passes for my brain…
I want a cheeseburger.
I want a really good cheeseburger.
Where…
Processing…
Flameburger.
Now, it’s been close to a decade since I’ve been to Flameburger but I remember that claim I made back then. I wonder if it’ll hold up. So I show GF the pics and she says let’s do that and we bop out to the car and head up to Hilltop, pop 744, with me along the way explaining that they have this burger called the Triple Mega Flameburger which is three quarter pounds of beef, three slices of cheese, and twelve slices of bacon and if you eat it all you either get it free or you get your picture on the wall, I can’t remember. GF says something like “Jeez” or “Damn” and I say, “Yeah, I only did it once.”
She looks at me and asks, “And you don’t remember what you got?”
Of course I don’t. Because the sandwich I’m referring to is called the Ultimate Mega, it’s three pounds of beef, twelve slices of cheese, and twelve slices of bacon and people just get their picture on the wall. I have not done this. This is why you smoke weed, kids: So you think that, at some point, you have eaten a three quarter pound burger only to be surprised to find out it was a three pound burger and then realize that you have not done that. (Also, they have a Double Mega Flameburger Challenge where you get a button for successfully eating a two pound cheeseburger. I’m not putting myself through gastro-intestinal distress for a button.)
We get there and we go inside and I’ll be dolgarned if we don’t have just the perkiest little server this side of the Pecos. GF orders the six ounce California Flameburger with cheese medium rare hold the tomato (she has a thing about restaurant tomatoes and I don’t blame her), I get the eight ounce Flameburger with cheese medium because my goddamned health. I think we both ordered grilled onions. Upon inquiry, I learned that pickles do not come on the sandwich.
Flameburger doesn’t do the “smashburger” style of cheeseburger. They take big thick fuck off patties and lay them on a grill over an open fucking flame, like a fucking man does it, hence the name.
We get our cheeseburgers open-faced and I slap on some catsup and mustard, just the way I like it, slap it closed, and bite into it and oh, sweet baby lord Jesus. It was good. But was it still the best?
Hard to qualify and not because I’ve been on the Band Box bandwagon lately. It’s a different style. It’s a thick patty not smashed down into a griddle. It is left to relax and sear over an open gas flame. The cheese is laid on right before it’s served to you so you might want to give it a chance to melt (which it will do eventually). And there was something I noticed watching the guy on the grill - we got seats at the counter specifically so I could watch the guy on the grill. I like watching people cook. Anyway, I watched him. He threw on one patty. And then he waited for, like, a while and then he threw on another patty. Then he arranged a small pile of lettuce leaves, a slice of tomato, and dollop of mayo and then he was all, “Shit.” GF got my attention so I missed what happened after that but next thing after I looked over, he’s got a pile of lettuce leave and a dollop of mayo, no tomato. Then he drops the fries - Sorry, slang from my fast food days. Dropping fries means lowering them into the deep fryer, he’s not a klutz. Then he flips the patties. Then GF gets my attention again so I missed whether he put the buns or the onions on the grill next and we’re talking about Portland and whatnot and then I see homie arrange things on the plates and hand them to our server who brought them over to us. But you got all that, right?
The guy had things down to a system of time. My patty went on first because it needed to cook just a teensy bit longer than GF’s. He pulled out the veggies for hers at a specific time. So on, so forth, he had a system in place and he didn’t make a move that wasn’t required nor did he make one before it was required. It could be mastery, it could be motor memory but the guy had things down to a schedule. My burger came out medium, GF’s came out a little pinker.
Overall atmosphere?
There was a lot of sparkly red, white, and blue shit strung up all over the place in preparation for the holiday on Wednesday. There was a sign on the door that GF shared on Instagram regarding sagging jeans not being allowed inside.
I’ve had enough of IDPol for the week, y’all can debate that sign amongst yourselves. Don’t engage me on this. I just wanted a cheeseburger to take a break from marching
ANYway, the burger had that flame char though not too much, we are indoors after all, but it was enough that it hit the spot after watching grilling videos on my Friday lunch break. Or was it Thursday? The grilled onion was sweet and still crisp with a little give to it. The bun stayed out of the way. The fries were, uh, crinkle cut. The cheese was american. No frills, straight forward. It would remind you of that time Ron Swanson dunked on Chris Traeger at the burger challenge. If you know how to put meat on fire, you’re already ninety five percent of the way to the destination. A lot of people get this.
I guess the end verdict is that this is the burger you make at home on your grill. It’s not hip, it’s not trendy, it doesn’t employ any of the newest techniques, it’s done the way they’ve been doing it since nineteen fifty five, the way that’s kept them open since nineteen fifty five, with a recipe likely developed on a backyard grill somewhere, likely no more complicated than seasoned with salt and pepper.
Gun to head, can I call this the best? Well, the best in its style. You don’t match a chihuahua against a great dane at Westminster, you don’t pit a Flameburger against a “smashburger” (psst, we can stop doing that style now, MPLS, we’re over-saturated). Come to think of it, I can’t think of another place that does burgers like Flameburger, I think they might be an anomaly. Whatever. Go give them your money.
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