The Burger Matron of ATL

People who know me well will tell you that I am not much of a traveler. I just don't get bitten by the travel bug very often. It's too much trouble for me. Traveling anywhere worthwhile usually involves parting with relatively large sums of money. I have to plan. I have to pack. It takes a long time to get there, wherever "there" may be. I have to deal with crowded airports and knowing that I'll be flagged by security. (Apparently a high percentage of terrorists think that a clever pseudonym to move about with is "John Thomas"--obviously they're not British, or they'd rethink this choice.) I'm not fond of any of those things.

This is not to say I never journey outside of my central Connecticut stomping grounds. I do hit the road from time to time. I'll read something in "National Geographic" or "Weekly World News" (or more likely see an episode of "Diners, Dives and Drive-Ins") that whets my appetite and I spring (maybe lurch?) into spontaneous action, busting out the credit card to purchase my airfare to vacation city. I work out all the other details of my trip after I've committed to getting there. Of course, a more mundane reason for me to get out of Dodge is to attend some work-related function, and that is the case in this particular story.

Atlanta, Georgia--Hotlanta, A-town, The Big Peach--the bastion of southern culture and, according to a 2007 Wall Street Journal article by Raymond Sokolov, the home of the best burger in America. I was headed to Atlanta for a national service conference, and as is my wont, I research to see who is serving up the finest burgers, chili dogs and barbecue in the area I'm traveling to. It's a safe bet that I will not find the best of this tasty triumvirate under the same roof so I know I won't have it all, but I'll get me at least one.

I was convinced that I had hit the jackpot after reading about Ann's Snack Bar in the WSJ piece. I was going to be in the hometown of the greatest burger on the planet, so that became the focus of my trip. Some might say obsession. Any one I met I subjected to my anticipation of the grilled glory that would soon be mine. I wanted desperately to get to Miss Ann's and each day that I was in Atlanta I vowed anew that this would be the day. I pestered colleagues and new acquaintances alike to make the trek with me, but I had no takers. In fact, people were starting to look at me like I might be something akin to rabid. For my part, I marveled that not everyone wanted to take advantage of this culinary opportunity.

Finally, though, my persistence paid off. Sunny, a colleague from New Haven proved game enough. Or maybe she was just taking pity on me. It matters not. I had my sidekick and we hopped a cab across town, building an appetite discussing God, Nietzsche, Marx, and other deep and mysterious topics…all this in a cab ride that took 15 minutes.

Ann's Snack Bar is set on a forlorn-looking strip of Memorial Drive in the Kirkwood 'hood, and Sunny and I arrived before Miss Ann even opened for business. There were already four people sitting around waiting to get in. I had read that Miss Ann was something of a real-life Soup Nazi (Seinfeldian reference, for those of you unplugged from modern pop culture for the last 20 years) so we chatted up our fellows-in-waiting, trying to get a line on behavioral do's and don'ts. I didn't want to do or say anything that would get me banned before getting one of the world famous Ghetto Burgers down my gullet. When Miss Ann opened the doors we all dutifully lined up and quietly took our seats at the counter. Sunny and I each ordered Ghetto Burgers, and sweet teas to wash them down.

Miss Ann's shop definitely had its own vibe. A list of rules (eight, I believe) adorned her wall regarding appropriate behavior and decorum but she was a pleasant woman, and she carried on amiably, especially with those I presumed to be her regulars. It was probably just my expectations getting the better of me, but I thought she sized up everyone at the counter, sort of like a gunslinger does before a duel. In my mind's eye I imagined that Miss Ann could've been the Outlaw Josey Wales, grim and deliberate as she flipped burgers while doing in her adversaries.

I was fascinated watching her work the grill and the prep station. She worked alone, purposefully, through her obviously well-practiced routine. Although she was a slight woman, her hands seemed very large to me as she clenched fistfuls of ground beef, mashing them into loose discs the size of Frisbees before laying them on the grill. She then sliced onions over the top of the sizzling patties before hitting everything with a liberal sprinkling of what looked to be Lawry's Seasoned Salt. She then began an assembly line of hamburger buns and fixin's. Each bun lid got a dollop of mayonnaise, a leaf of iceberg lettuce, and sliced tomatoes. The bun bottoms held squirts of mustard and ketchup. Miss Ann moved to the deep-fryer, dropping in the slices of bacon that would crown her signature dish. She then flipped the burgers, adding slices of American cheese to each as they cooked down the home stretch. I was salivating.

Finally, Miss Ann began to pull together the meaty morsels: a healthy spoon of chili as the base, then one enormous cheeseburger slid into place, followed by another, and then she topped the whole shebang with a couple slices of deep-fried bacon. Ann positioned the lid into place and set the behemoth burgers before us. Sunny and I just looked agape at each other, wondering exactly how we were supposed to eat these gigantic masterpieces. While we contemplated, Sunny asked a patron to take a picture of us with our burgers.

Ultimately, I decided on the direct approach. I pressed down hard on the burger, making it somewhat more compact and easier to get my mouth around. I opened wide and took a big bite. The burger itself was juicy, well-seasoned, and cooked just about perfect. There was a lot of stuff going on there in the flavors department, too--the savory chili mixing with the grilled onions and other condiments, the cheese all gooey, providing that creamy goodness that sticks to the roof of your mouth. Anyway, I finished my entire burger, savoring every bite, trying to lock this beefy extravaganza into my taste bud's memory vault. Meanwhile, Sunny managed half of hers.

Was this the best burger in America? I don't know. I would definitely classify it as a "Must Try Before I Kick Off" and call it one of the best I've had--or perhaps more accurately--one of my favorites. Because, really, what is the definition of "best"? We all favor our food choices based on our preferences, proclivities, and past experiences. The bottom line is, if you are in The Big Peach and love burgers, you owe it to yourself to stop by Ann's Snack Bar for a Ghetto Burger to decide for yourself. But hurry--I hear she's looking forward to retirement.

The Eye(s) Have it

The memory is a funny thing. Mine specifically, anyway. Its wrought with gaping holes. Names, dates, places, happenings--nothing is safe from the voracious fog that inhabits my memory banks. I have a theory about that--it's part misspent youth, part not paying a whole lot of attention, part self-absorption, and part life-long philosophy of not trying too hard to remember anything I can look up (there's only so much capacity in the cranium, you know?). Now, I'm not saying these are all equal parts of my memory malfunction. In fact, I'd prefer to just say I'm mnemonically challenged and leave it at that. There are things, though--episodes, escapades, events--that evoke deeply cherished remembrances.

One of those memories can arguably be called the foundation of this blog. In high school my buddies and I had a bit of a ritual. Now, I cannot tell you how often we did this (someone else would have to fill in that particular blank), but it was repeated enough throughout our four years that it seems we had elevated the practice to habit, if not obsession. Back then we'd pile into (usually) Steve's Chevy Impala right after school to cruise around and misspend some of that aforementioned youth. And when the munchies set in we'd head over to the only place that could sate our ravenous needs--Chili Willie's.

Chili Willie's wasn't even the name of the place. It wasn't really even a place. It was a plain white roadside catering truck parked--faithfully, daily-- in front of Highland Park that had a simple "chili dog" hand-painted on its side. This was the chili dog Mecca; the meat-sauce Taj Mahal. Chili Willie was just the moniker we stuck on the proprietor. I can see Willie now, a curmudgeonly cook decked out in a white t-shirt, his enormous gut protruding over his white painter pants. I'm sure that to any living creature inhabiting Willie's floor space, that overhanging anatomical feature was akin to a moving eclipse and he kept it in fine shape with a steady influx of Busch beer, which he kept stocked on ice in a cooler by the truck's doorway. But I digress.

Willie's franks were boiled and his buns were steam softened. Typical roadside fare. But what set his dogs apart was his meat sauce. It was a ridiculous fire-orange, almost neon in its coloration like nothing I had seen before or since. It was sans-beans, fine-grained and was absolutely nuclear as it tingled my taste buds and tickled my trachea, igniting a slow burn that I can still feel rising from my neck to the top of my head, beads of sweat appearing like a biological sprinkler system to extinguish the fire. Damn, it tasted (and hurt) so good!

And, therein, friends lies the basis of this web diary. I have been searching ever since for the chili dog of my youth, the holy grail of sauced franks, the perfect peppery prefabrication of bun, sausage, and chili-laced ground beef sauce. But it's not just wieners I'm after, uh uh! I've also been duly influenced in my youth by many of the other culinary post-chic (don't even know what that means) fares--fried clams, cheeseburgers, malts, onion rings, pizza, etc. Friends who've had the misfortune to watch me eat say they can tell when a morsel is particularly tasty because my left eye spasms like Elvis (circa 1956) singing "Hound Dog".

So, as my left eye and I hit the road indulging, imbibing, inhaling, and ingesting we'll fill you in on what we think is the best of the best (subject, to change of course). From time to time I'll even throw in some sundry selections on music, movies and other pop culture motivations (just to mix things up).

Namasté.