I’m a pretty simple guy.
I don’t spend a lot of time brooding about the great questions of our time. Why are we here? What happens when we die? Why do people watch Nancy Grace?
Nope, I tend to leave the important questions like those for people who have the time to ponder them. Me? I just live my life and let the navel gazers do the heavy intellectual lifting.
But even a simple guy like myself will occasionally take time to consider one of the important questions facing all of us who share this planet.
Yesterday, I was driving over to Southeast Kansas. On the radio, the NPR station out of Stillwater, Okla., was airing a show called “Talk of the Nation,” and on the show was a guy talking about climate change.
What? Oh, you think I’m talking about climate change here. That’s crazy. What do you think I am, some sort of liberal?
No, while the folks on the radio talked about climate change, I started thinking about what makes a truly great cheeseburger truly great. Something, I think we can all agree, is way more important than climate change.
I write about cheeseburgers a lot. About once a month I will hop in my car and drive until I find a place that looks like it might serve up a pretty good cheeseburger. I’ve been doing that for several months now. And so far, I haven’t been disappointed. Last week, I drove over to Baxter Springs, Kan., and got on the outside of a cheeseburger at the Cafe on the Route.
A few years ago, shortly after the Cafe on the Route opened, several people told me I should stop by the place and eat. They told me it was my kind of place, but for some reason I never seemed to find the time to drop by. Then, one night, I was watching the show “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” on the Food Network and saw a feature on a neat place called — you guessed it — Cafe on the Route.
“Darn,” I remember thinking. “I guess I should have stopped by.”
My cheeseburger at Cafe on the Route was great. But then again, everything on the menu at Cafe on the Route is great. By the way, if you walk away from Cafe on the Route still hungry, it’s your own fault.
The folks at the cafe know how to serve up a meal, is what I’m saying.
For lunch, the folks at the cafe sort of let you build your own cheeseburger. So I did.
When I built my cheeseburger at the cafe, I asked for Swiss cheese. I also asked for lettuce, tomato, onion and pickles. Then I added bacon. To me, that’s a pretty good cheeseburger.
But I’ve also had a pretty good cheeseburger with American cheese. I don’t mind cheddar cheese on my burger, but it’s not my favorite. Sometimes a few jalapeno peppers can add a nice touch to a cheeseburger, and to be honest, you don’t have to add bacon to make a great cheeseburger. Actually, technically speaking, I suppose adding bacon to a cheeseburger makes it a bacon-cheeseburger, not a cheeseburger. But maybe I’m getting too deep here.
The thing is, what I think what makes a great cheeseburger great is not necessarily what someone else might think makes a great cheeseburger great. My wife, for example, thinks a great cheeseburger must come with grilled onions. My Uncle Jim can’t eat cheese, so he thinks not having cheese on a cheeseburger makes a cheeseburger great. But that might be a Zen thing.
Other people prefer blue cheese (yuck) on their burgers.
When it comes to the meat itself, I’m partial to a greasy burger fried up on a flat grill, like they do at the Gooch Bros. Grill here in Joplin. However, there is also something to be said for a burger grilled on an open flame.
I guess what I’m saying is there is no one way to fix a great cheeseburger. I think as long as you have beef and two buns, you are free to toss whatever you want onto your burger. Well except, blue cheese.
That’s just gross.
