Louis' Lunch

Not long ago, I was watching a show on the Travel Channel called the Chowdown Countdown. It listed some of the most iconic restaurants throughout the United States, counted them down from 100-1, and showed the details of what made them great. http://www.travelchannel.com/TV_Shows/Chowdown_Countdown

Some were famous for their location, some for their longevity, some for their gluttony. A personal favorite of mine, Primanti Brothers, of Pittsburgh fame, for all the reasons listed above, was sure to be on this list. The only question was where would it land? As it turned out, it was # 3 in the country, so I figured numbers 1 and 2 were places that I should try if I ever got the chance.

And get the chance I did, when I found myself in New Haven, CT on Thursday night, just in time for dinner, and just blocks away from Louis' Lunch. This place is right in the middle of what appears to be a "happening" part of town, at least by what I imagine New Haven's standards to be. It's a pretty nice row of bars, and late night food joints, with Louis Lunch I suppose being the most iconic.
http://louislunch.com/

Apparently, as the story goes, this place served America's first hamburger back in the year 1900, and when you walk into the place, it actually feels like 1900. The walls are all brick, with most of the bricks engraved with the year they were sent over to the building. There are wooden panels throughout the place as well, and they are all engraved, too, only they are engraved with the names, initials, and things-to-remember-me-by of generations and generations of patrons. (Looking for a while for a place to make my mark, I threw an "M.D.E. 3/11/10" right above the middle panel on the inside of the bathroom door.)

The place was very cool, very small, and very intimidating. I had been to places like this before (i.e. Pat's Cheesesteaks in Philadelphia, The Pizza House in Ambridge, PA if that's more your thing...), where if you don't know how to order, you don't get much time to learn, you start to panic, and you wind up feeling like a dork sitting back at your table with something you didn't even want to eat. I was wary of this happening to me here, but I had two things working to my advantage: 1. it was not crowded at all. Maybe about 3 cops and a family of 3 sitting down to eat, so they weren't trying to blast through a never-ending line of customers. 2. The people behind the counter were actually really nice. I looked at the menu for a minute, ordered a "Ham Tomato" a bag of chips, and a can of Pepsi. I got a "No problem, sir," and it was up and ready in about 7 minutes.

Now 7 minutes may seem like a long time to cook a burger, but when you see how they cook it, you'd understand if it takes 25. They use the original broilers that they must have used back in 1900, pressing the burger together vertically so some of the fat and grease drips into a tray along the bottom. (Normally I'd be alarmed, as the grease usually brings the flavor to the burger, which is why I never press the burgers with a spatula while on the grill, but these burgers were still EXTREMELY juicy, as evidenced by the oil and blood that soaked the bread they served it on.) While the burger is cooking over/ between open flame(s) (it was hard to see exactly how it works from where I was sitting), they throw two pieces of pre-sliced, garden variety white bread into an old-school, rotisserie-type of toaster. Once the burger is done, they slap it in between the bread, toss on a tomato slice or onion slices, whichever you order, and slide it over to you on a paper plate.

The burger was actually really good. I'm a big ketchup guy, and ketchup is a BIG no-no at Louis' Lunch, so I was worried about the flavor being a little dull. That wasn't so much the case, though. You look at the burger, see that it has very few (if any) of the makings of what usually makes a burger great, and then you take a bite and realize it's much better than it looks. The burgers are not huge, but after eating it, I was pretty full, pretty satisified, and glad I had stopped by. 8 Bearclaws, but due in large part to the history and the atmosphere.