By Mike Pound
news@joplinglobe.com
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The phone message that my colleague Dave Woods left on my desk one day last week was somewhat cryptic, but it did contain one phrase I recognized.
Here’s what Dave wrote: “The Bear’s Den on 60 Highway. Good (unreadable) grill. Double Cheeseburger.”
By the way, whenever I use the word “colleague” in relation to someone who works with me, I feel like a big shot.
Back to Dave’s message. Dave told me that a couple from Carthage had called my phone. Since the couple called during normal morning business hours, I, of course, wasn’t in yet, so Dave spoke with them. Dave said the couple told him that the Bear’s Den Drive-in on Highway 60 in Wyandotte, Okla., is a neat place to eat and has a great double cheeseburger. The Carthage couple thought I might be interested in that information.
I was.
So much so that on Monday, I headed down Highway 43 to Seneca, cut across on Highway 60 to Wyandotte and pulled into the parking lot at the Bear’s Den Drive-in, which sits on the south side of the road across from the Lucky Turtle Casino.
I have a theory about cheeseburgers. It is my contention that the fancier the restaurant, the worse the cheeseburger. So when I got out of my car and looked at the small building that houses the Bear’s Den Drive-in, I was pretty sure I was going to be getting on the outside of a good cheeseburger.
The Bear’s Den Drive-in is not fancy, is what it’s not. But any time a place has the word “drive-in” in its name, you don’t want fancy. What you want is good. What you want is simple. See, to my mind, there is nothing complicated about serving up a good cheeseburger. All you need is some quality ground beef, a little bit of seasoning, a good grill, a bun, a slice of tomato, some onions, some lettuce, a pickle on the side and some mustard.
Some people put ketchup on their burgers, and I guess that’s OK, but I’m more of a mustard guy.
What happens, I think, at some of your fancier joints is that the big-time chefs figure they are too good to simply serve up a cheeseburger. Nope, they have to figure out a way to make their cheeseburger “unique,” to make it “reflect the ambience of its surroundings and the mood of the moment” ... whatever the heck that means. So what you get is a burger topped with aged goat cheese from France, a slice of slightly bruised avocado from the Andes and a thinly sliced piece of raw tuna from somewhere in Japan, baked in a hand-crafted, wood-fired oven from New Zealand, and served on a seven-grain bun with a bowl of hummus served on the side.
That’s not what you get at the Bear’s Den Drive-in in Wyandotte.
The Bear’s Den is a small place. I took a seat at one of the tables near the door. The main room of the drive-in is slightly bigger than the area I was sitting in, and the walls are covered with Wyandotte High School (home of the Fighting Bears) sports jerseys and photos.
I chose the seat near the front because I could see the kitchen from my table. I like to watch what happens in restaurant kitchens. At the Bear’s Den, one woman was working the grill and fry baskets while another woman worked the front, taking orders and running the cash register.
I arrived at the drive-in shortly after noon. While I was there, the place got progressively busier, but both women worked at the same steady, professional pace. You can tell restaurant people know what they’re doing if they don’t get rattled when they get busy.
I looked at the menu and told the nice woman who took my order that I wanted a grilled chicken salad.
HAHAHAHAHA, I kill myself.
Nope, I told the nice woman that I wanted a double cheeseburger with everything on it and an order of onion rings. I usually order french fries, but sometimes a man has to spice things up.
A few minutes later, the woman working in the kitchen brought my cheeseburger out to me. When she walked away, I noticed that I didn’t have any silverware. I looked at the burger. Then I picked it up and tried to take a bite. Then I put the burger down and asked the nice woman if I could have a knife.
See, and I’ve said this before, you can tell you’re on the outside of cheeseburger greatness if you have to cut your burger in half in order to eat the thing.
The nice woman brought me a knife. I cut the burger in half and took a bite, then I leaned back and smiled.
I decided that my Bear’s Den Drive-in cheeseburger did an excellent job of reflecting the ambience of its surroundings and the mood of the moment.
