2910 East High Street

Cast in the eerie shadows of the twin towers of the Limerick Nuclear Power Plant lies the Philadelphia Premium Outlet Mall, a mecca for consumers that in just a few days will cast its siren song southward to lure Black Friday shoppers and welcome their efforts to spur the economy through ritualistic spending at Nike, Adidas, Jockey, Le Creuset and the thankfully curable Perfumania (not to mention food offerings such as the painfully punny Chinese stand called Asian Chao).

What was even just a few months ago a barren field now teems with activity, forever in the present with today’s hottest fashions and modern trends.  At the exit ramp off of Route 422 drivers are offered barely the chance to turn away from the mall, almost by centripetal force their cars are willed to turn left and ease into the acres of available free parking. But for those who can fight the potent inertia of drastically reduced prices on factory seconds and previous year’s stock (or perhaps more realistically forestall their entry into the maelstrom for a few moments) there is a reward for steering your car to the right at the end of the ramp – The Hilltop Drive-In.

In stark contrast to the not so accurately named outlet mall (anyone from these parts will know they are nowhere near Philadelphia, Google Maps pegs it at just over 29 miles from City Hall to the Wilson’s Leather Outlet), the Hilltop sits as a pink-hued reminder of a bygone era and the simple pleasures of a pre-fast food chain dominated burger landscape.

Make no mistake, this is not the best burger you will ever eat, but the overall experience makes it well worth the effort and miles.  Add equal parts classic architecture, hand-spun milkshakes and malts, black and white photographs and retro signage and you’ve got yourself the ideal destination for a lazy Sunday drive to the far reaches of the suburban Philly telephone area code.

On this my second trip to the joint I ordered the California Cheeseburger, so-named for the appearance of (gasp!) vegetables which, at a time in our country, must have been viewed as exotic and otherworldly, just like the Golden State.  Two perfectly acceptable fast food size and style beef patties were joined on the white, squishy burger bun by a piece of American cheese, sliced raw onions, tomato, shredded lettuce and mayo.  (I substituted the kaiser roll which this sandwich is usually served on for a regular burger bun due to my long held belief that a kaiser roll has no business being near a burger.)

I had forgotten the pure pleasure of eating a burger with heaps of mayo on it. Despite the results of A Hamburger Today’s “Favorite Condiment” poll back in August, far too few of the burgers we eat have mayonnaise on them.  Why not?  Adding more fat to a burger seems like a no-brainer, and at the Hilltop, which uses some brand that bridges the chasm between Hellman’s egginess and the sweetness of its arch enemy Miracle Whip, the gooey-ness continuum that is created with the inevitable mingling of the white American cheese and mayo is pure perfection.  That moment of self-questioning “was that the cheese or the mayo?” works well in the burger as grease delivery vehicle equation.

The Hilltop’s roots reach back to the 1950’s when it was a Carvel outpost and the shakes and malts served today are legit.  I had a chocolate malt on my first trip and it was perfect, deeply chocolaty with flecks of slightly bitter malt powder.  Soft-serve cones and sundaes are available as well and I can imagine in the summer time they do a fare bit of business cooling off the locals with these treats.

One of the great surprises of The Hilltop is that they serve Good’s Potato Chips from nearby Adamstown, PA.  An old-school producer of no-frills, fried in lard chips, Good’s have become a strictly rationed treat in our house (Philly area folks can get them closer to home at The Head Nut in Ardmore) and as served here are the perfect accompaniment to your burger.  They also offer pretty good french fries, McDonald’s style thin cuts fried up crisp and tasty, but when presented with the chip option they slip into second place.

Special mention must be given of their crab bisque soup.  With our proximity to Baltimore and the Chesapeake Bay, decent crab doesn’t seem like it would be too hard to come across, but it certainly wasn’t expected in this kind of setting and truly stole the show on our first visit.

Huge thanks to ModBetty of Retro Roadmap for bringing The Hilltop to my attention via her great post and pictures (special notice should be given of the early ’50’s black and white image she shares of the Hilltop as a Carvel -complete with a rogues gallery of patrons straight out of central casting).  Her site is packed with other great info and she is the rare Keystone state resident with actual duckpin bowling experience.

Quick dinner from a few weeks back when a 1/2 day at work gave me the opportunity to hit up two different farmers markets for ingredients.  A Le Bus Whole Wheat Burger bun was the perfect foundation for our burger mix of natural, (primarily) grass-fed beef and chopped bacon ends (oddly shaped, wildly fatty slabs of deliciousness from the Lancaster County Farmers Market in Wayne, PA).  Add blue cheese, a fire-engine red tomato and some extra whole bacon ends on top and the urge to go out to a restaurant and spend $15 for a fancy burger is officially curbed.  When possible serve your burgers on plates with pictures of surgeons on them – its a karma thing and it fights off the bad cholesterol.

Not too much to offer by way of recipe on this one, more along the lines of advice…we find the beef available at farm stands tends towards the lean side, so chopping up bacon and adding it to the mix prior to forming your patties keeps the burgers moist (in addition to adding flavor).  We tested a new (and cheap) cast iron skillet from Ikea and were happy with the results.

Additional Resources:

Beef from Hillacres Pride

Bacon Ends from S. Clyde Weaver

Tomato from Good Harvest Farms

If you follow the Philly foodie scene you are no doubt well aware of Foobooz.  Site proprietor Art Etchells does an incredible job of tracking all of the openings, closings, hot deals and need to know info in and around the Philly restaurant scene.  He was drafted by the folks at First Person Arts to host a “Burger Cruise” on November 3rd and if you are a burger fan you have the rare opportunity to hit up 4 great spots for burgers, beers and conversation.

The restaurants are Good Dog, Barclay Prime, Pub & Kitchen and Noble.  I asked the folks at First Person Arts what you can expect for the price of admission and here is what they said:

…this will be more like a tasting tour—a little bit of this, a little bit of that.  Maybe a slider or two from each place, with a sampling of a few different beers.

If this sounds good to you, buy tickets sooner than later as the trip
is limited to 35 participants. 

In advance: $45 (First Person Arts members) / $50 (general public)
 $50/$55 after 10/25

Buy tickets here

Burgatory readers can take advantage of a discount!!
Get the member price even if you aren't a member by simply
adding "Burgatory" to your last name when you register.   

So if your name is John Smith, type John Smith Burgatory. 
If your name happens to be Meredith Baxter Birney write
your name as Meredith Baxter Birney Burgatory.

Disclosure: I receive no compensation if you buy your ticket
via the above link or by using the discount code.  I do not get
a free ticket to the event for posting this either.

Proceeds support First Person Arts programming.

As the days get shorter and the air a bit crisper up here in PA, the odds of foregoing preparing a home cooked dinner and ordering Chinese takeout instead have increased.  This quick recipe came about the day after a recent takeout night and we resurrected it this evening for dinner with some friends.  It is a dead simple recipe which produces a quirky take on familiar fare and, when combined with Sriracha Ketchup, makes for a darn good burger.

The taste?  Take everything you love about bacon on a burger and then sugar that up about 200%. By itself, honey boneless spareribs may be the most addictive item on any Chinese menu (and easily account for 2/3 of my repenting on Yom Kippur)  and as served here (chopped up and mingled with high quality beef) it follows along the lines of the trend led by so many “name chefs” adding different cuts of meats into their burgers (not just on them).  The spicy ketchup cuts down the sweetness a bit and provides a tease of heat to take this burger to the next level.

Recipe:

Rough #’s here, but any combination of these ingredients will produce more than passable results.

Dice the pork into very small slivers then combine all ingredients in a bowl, mix lightly but well and then form patties (we made slider sized burgers).  As mentioned earlier on this blog, and ripped from the pages of John Torode’s book “Beef and other bovine matters,” when using the oyster sauce you can omit salt from the recipe.  The oyster sauce provides you with the tang you are looking for and keeps the burgers incredibly moist.

Siracha-Ketchup

As shown cooked on the gas grille and served on Martin’s Whole Wheat Potato Rolls.

You’d probably be excused for confusing Louie’s Lunch with Louis’ Lunch, the venerable Connecticut restaurant which claims to be the birthplace of the hamburger. Both have Ivy League links (Louis’ Lunch is in New Haven, home of Yale, while Louie’s Lunch sits on the north campus of Cornell in Ithaca, NY), both are mobile (Louis’s moved four times before settling into its current location and Louie’s has four wheels and thus can move at any moment – though there are a bunch of wires to unhook from the light pole and something that looks curiously like coax cable) and oh yeah, both serve darn nice, lo-fi burgers.

With lineage dating back to 1918, the current Louie’s Lunch truck sets up shop seven days a week to satiate the late night cravings of our country’s future doctors, lawyers, jock-rockers (Huey Lewis) and surgeon generals (oh yeah I’m talking about you C. Everett Koop).  Until 3 am (except Sunday nights when they retire at the modest hour of midnight) students in various states of stress and/or inebriation can hit up this mobile c-store for cold drinks, hot coffee, energy shots, candy bars and of course – burgers.

Back in college at the much less educationally challenging (though no less hilly) Mansfield University, I discovered the Bo Burger, a griddled hamburger topped with cheese and a fried egg. To this day, no single dish has screamed “college” to me as much as this combination which I used to enjoy at the local truck stop affectionately known as Greasy Eddie’s, and so when I saw the Bo Burger listing on the starboard side menu of the truck I jumped at the chance to reminisce about my own college years.

Louie’s version featured about 1/4 lb of griddled beef, resting on some white American cheese and topped with a nicely cooked egg.  Health departments be damned for their insistence that eggs cannot be runny, but kudos to the flat-top chef who brought this oeuf in just on the cooked through side, avoiding that rubbery, overcooked state.  The Bo Burgers of my youth were served on squishy white buns, but this being Ithaca (home of Moosewood and macrobiotic jerky) my Bo was served on a whole grain bun flecked with oats…a bit odd, but good; almost allowing me to dream for a second that this burger was kissed by Mother Earth herself and thus filled with only healthful vitamins and minerals (reality check – it is in actuality a glorious greasebomb of a burger!).

Served with a smile by an actual Cornell student, I give this burger high marks for both quality and history.  For years I have been fascinated by the idea of making decent burgers in a food truck and as mentioned on this site before, my own bucket list includes opening a mobile burger shop called “Burgatory” (ideally parked on City Ave in Philadelphia half-way between the Catholic Seminary and the Hebrew Yeshiva).  Louie’s provides further proof that good burgers can come from just about anywhere and thousands of Cornell grads no doubt have fond memories of placing their own late-night orders at Louie’s window.

The Louie’s folks have done a great job of cataloging their own history on their web site.  For more details on the various iterations of the lunch truck and pictures of through the years, click here.

This is the first of a four part series ingeniously titled “Burgers I Ate While In The Finger Lakes Region A Few Weeks Ago.”  Future installments will include entries from a winery, a creamery and the epicenter of the gourmet vegetarian movement.  Stay tuned.

To put it lightly, I am not a fan of Oprah and as such I had an immediate prejudice against this recipe when my lovely wife mentioned she was going to prepare some for me to grill for dinner the other night.  Not sure of the complete back story on this…apparently Oprah ate this burger at Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort, begged for the recipe for herself and then shared it with her TV audience.

Recipe here via Oprah.com (ugh!)

The best part of this burger might be the use of the mango chutney.  Clearly not a common burger ingredient, it keeps the burger juicy (which is often an issue when cooking a turkey burger and relying on your mom’s advice about cooking turkey until it is done aka completely dried out) without imparting too much fruity flavor.  The apples and scallions are nice touches, too.

Additional notes: Finally got the BBQ up to a high enough temp to land some grill marks on the burgers – a geeky thing that fills me with pride…Potato rolls are the bacon of the baked goods industry, they just make everything taste better…Pull back on the salt a bit, you aren’t going to draw out any beefy flavor by loading up the sodium so you might use this as an opportunity to back off…Bought the corn at Root’s Market the other day, which is a completely chaotic Amish/Farmer’s market nowhere near where you or I live (which is a shame)…For those that know me personally, the addition of a mini-van to our driveway and now my reviewing a recipe promoted by Oprah means that yes, I have officially given up. The old Marc was a lot of fun – remember the good times and pour one out for me.

Now you can try to authentically recreate this baby at home.  Still no sign of the mysterious 11th ingredient (only available in Portuguese).  Enjoy!

In this 32-page easy reader, Papa Bear and Brother Bear head off for fast food burgers at a restaurant curiously named “In And Out.”  Since the 1960’s, over 200 Berenstein titles have been published so it was inevitable that one would prominently feature burgers.

Interestingly, an AP obituary of Stan Berenstain included the passage

… the Berenstain Bears, written and illustrated by Stan and Jan Berenstain, helped children for 40 years cope with trips to the dentist, babysitters, eating junk food and cleaning their messy rooms.

so this title is either a rare moral slip up on the part of the authors or further proof that the hamburger has transcended junk food status and shifted into the “food of the Gods” category.

The (human) Berenstain’s were Philly folks through and through, so it is quite possible that the title is a mere coincidence and actually just a play on the fact that the story literally revolves around a door (note the title is “…Go In And Out” not “…Go To In And Out”).  Whatever the back story, the tale worked for our daughter who, when bumbling Papa Bear finally made it inside the restaurant and ordered two delicious looking burgers, uttered “wow, I’d really like one of those burgers.”

Picanha Grill Lanchonete (yes, that is spelled correctly)

The best new burger in Philadelphia is an absolute mess!  An ungodly train wreck of ingredients served to you in a location devoid of glitz, glamor, panache or any of the other adjectives our beloved city’s slew of worthy new burger joints can lay claim to.  It is primal, carnal, evil and glorious.  It is more Ronaldo than Ronald.  It is 5 inches tall and a hemisphere of flavor wide.  It is the reason I may never have to venture into Newark, NJ again.

I present to you the X-Tudo Hamburger-

Game-Set- Match, checkmate, “you sank my battleship“, Yahtzee! and “boom goes the dynamite (as uttered by Cleveland Brown)” all wrapped up in wax paper and delivered piping hot on a plate.

I was first introduced to the concept of Brazilian hamburgers by Jason Perlow’s review of Hamburgao in Newark on his pioneering food/tech site offthebroiler.  After that, and thanks to the coincidence of some of my work locations being in that neck of the woods, I trekked to the Ironbound to get my hands on a Cheese Egg as often as possible.  And whenever possible I dragged others, first my wife and daughter and then later my boss and some work colleagues.  The Brazilian version of a hamburger just rewrites the rules and is guaranteed to be a memorable experience (even if it were bad – and they have never been – it would be memorable for so many reasons including the atmosphere, the language and the ubiquitous pastries).  Now to find a location so close to home serving these gems…needless to say I’m a happy happy guy.

The Picanha Grill Lanchonete is the sister restaurant to Picanha Brazilian Grill, which sits further south on Castor Ave towards Oxford Circle and offers all-you-can-eat rodizio style dining.  In fact, the Lanchonete will be moving next door to the grill later this year, which is good news for anyone visiting from the City or the ‘burbs because it makes the trip about 10 minutes shorter (just off the Roosevelt Boulevard).  It features a long bar with high chairs for eating while watching Brazilian daytime TV and a row of tables for more refined noshing.  In the barren wasteland that is this strip of Castor Ave, the inside of this joint yearns for a hipness above what is both expected and probably attainable considering the rivers of asphalt just steps from any seat in the place.

The menu features several different variations on the kitchen sink theme, with your choice of hamburgers, chicken or hot dogs buried underneath.  Even if this wasn’t a burger blog I’d insist that this be your point of entry to the cuisine as, in my opinion, it provides the perfect foundation (both in shape and taste) for the bevy of toppings which run the gamut from the mundane (lettuce) and mandatory (bacon) to the ridiculous (bananas) and sublime (yes, potato sticks belong on your sandwich!).

My Portuguese is negligible, despite a short period of time living in Rhode Island (where have you gone Vinny Pazienza?), so I am still a bit lost as to how the description of my burger on the bi-lingual menu has more ingredients in Portuguese than English?  (11 items in Portuguese and 10 in English).  I’m jut going to assume the real secret to the deliciousness of this concoction is that magical 11th ingredient which us estrangeiro’s are forbidden to possess (like bikes in the United Arab Emirates  or  that Goethe quote about “…what we cannot understand”).

Eating this burger gracefully is impossible.  Even after cutting it in half (a tactic both to increase one’s ability to grip the darn thing and to cause me to pause long enough to weigh the downside of consuming the whole thing in one sitting) didn’t render it manageable.  An ample supply of napkins were key as were the polite pauses in conversation offered by the server who told me about his family in Sao Paolo and his impressions of Philadelphia after having only been here a short time.

In a year where so many great burger joints have opened in the City, the arrival of Picanha Gill Lanchonete has gone completely unheralded.  Nary a tweet, yelp or peep from a chowhound has tipped off the masses to this joint, and that is a shame.  I hope you’ll stray from your comfort zone at least once to test this place out (or their new location when it opens) because your perception of what makes a great burger will be changed forever.

Additional thoughts…Fries With That Shake’s friend girlscantell needs to diagram this thing for her next set of placemats….the roll at Hamburgao in Newark is a bit different and much better, but it is about an hour and a half away and will set you back $20 in tolls to get there so I am willing to forgive…I was in the area for business and to test out the kosher burger at Holy Land Grill (located just a few doors down).  Not sure if I will ever actually make it there…yes, it is called a hamburger but it has cheese on it, I think cheese is just a given.

You’ve seen books from the Images of America series thousands of times at your local bookstore, airport, historic landmark gift shop, etc. (there are over 5,000 titles in the series already).  They are paperback books chock-full of black and white pictures of historic towns, neighborhoods and fraternal organizations.  The Burger Chef book is the first one dedicated to a fast food outlet and for sheer historical and pop culture value, the chain is a great choice for this treatment.

First time author Scott R. Sanders uses images he has gathered from Burger Chef  co-founder Frank P. Thomas Jr. (who sadly passed on before the book was published*), several collectors and perhaps the largest collection of Burger Chef memorabilia, Schroeder’s Drive-In in Danville, Illinois, to move along the pretty compelling story of the chain.  Running almost parallel to McDonalds (in philosophy, McD’s set up shop in the big towns and Burger Chef ruled small town America), the chain was a trailblazer in fast food technology and marketing and at one point laid claim to the title of fastest growing fast food chain in the country (and second-largest chain overall behind McDonalds).

As much as I wanted Stacy Perman’s In-N-Out Burger book from earlier this year to be some sort of cosmic event – offering up the secrets to success and worldwide burger adulation with a side order of history, Sanders builds a story here that I think is much more compelling. In less space and really only with pictures, he illustrates Burger Chef’s impact on the industry and in reshaping small town America (now whether that is a good thing is debatable, but with chains that have disappeared we can cut them some slack).  The incredibly personal and candid photos used throughout stamp a real time and place aspect on the story, which ratchets up the nostalgia factor while easing you through the history.

Broken up into 6 sections, the book takes you from the birth of the franchise (like McDonalds, Burger Chef was born out of the technology that  was used in the restaurant – in this case the Sani-Shake and Sani-Broiler designed by chain founders under the General Equipment Company flag), through its growth and ultimate demise, with stops along the way to gawk at store merchandising, promotional items and advertisements.

One of the most interesting sections of the book is about an ill-fated side venture from Burger Chef, the Pied Piper mobile food van.  As shown below, the entire operation was run out of an early 60’s Volkswagen Van.

One innovation from Burger Chef that did stick was the “Fun Meal” which was introduced in 1973 and served as the template for similar offerings at other chains and continues on today as “Happy Meals” or “Kids Meals.”

I had the chance to speak with Scott about some topics not covered in the book.

The last Burger Chef closed in 1996, is there chain today making burgers similar to BC?

The hamburgers at Carl’s Jr. are flame-broiled and taste the closest to what I used to eat at Burger Chef. Burger King used to taste similar, but the flavor of their hamburgers has changed.

Asked if writing a book about burgers caused him to eat more of them…

I don’t think I ate hamburgers more frequently while writing the book, but I was often reminded of how much I missed eating hamburgers at Burger Chef.

Scott is an elementary school teacher in Alvin, Texas and I asked him how his pupils have reacted to the book…

Actually, I did a presentation about Burger Chef and my book for my school last spring, and the reaction of the students was amazing.  They were fascinated by the story of the chain and they all wanted to go out and eat at one of the restaurants.

If you are in Texas, Scott has a few recommendations for burger joints to check out including:

Burger Chef is available at area bookstores, independent retailers, and on-line retailers, or through Arcadia Publishing at (888)-313-2665 or www.arcadiapublishing.com.

Disclosure: I received a review copy of this book at my request.  I receive no compensation for your purchase and I am not related to Scott R. Sanders, but it is good to know there are other folks named Sanders who appreciate a good story and a burger.