On a lazy holiday weekend, in Any City U.S.A., on practically any street, you could inhale a whiff of hamburgers cooking on the grill. Virtually our national sandwich, the hamburger has become so ubiquitous, it can be found almost anywhere in the country, and, as one of our more dubious cultural exports, in some form from Vladivostock to the Fiji Islands.Even the French, the world's self-appointed culinary snobs, grudgingly acceded to a McDonald's restaurant in 1979.
Of course, there are dozens of burger variations, from cheeseburgers to Sloppy Joes; any number of cooking methods, including grilling, pan-frying, charbroiling and steaming. Adventurous truckers have been known to cook beef patties beneath the hoods of 18-wheelers rolling along the highway.
This harks back to the Tartar tribes of Mongolian and Turkish descents, who in the 13th century traversed on horseback the reaches of Asia and Europe. They presaged the hamburger's invention by placing a beef filet under the saddle, and marauding, plundering and pillaging until dinnertime. Their meal of tenderized raw meat, now known as steak tartar, became popular with seamen shipping out of the Baltic port of Hamburg, where it was first cooked in patty form, according to Hamburger Heaven, an illustrated history of the hamburger, by Jeffrey Tennyson.
Toward the turn of the 1900s, somebody — there are various claims as to whom — first put ground meat to bun, and the hamburger came into our culinary lexicon.
Over the years, creative cooks have varied its condiments from standard ketchup and mustard to bearnaise sauce, caviar and sauteed onions in sour cream, pineapple and even brandy. Vegetarians love the idea, but omit the meat, dining on veggie or soy burgers.
In tribute to the plebian hamburger, here are a couple of suggestions for your dining pleasure:
El Cap Restaurant
Without a doubt, this venerable St. Pete spot produces one of the Bay area's best burgers. The softest, freshest bun parted by the most tender, delectable meat, it's everything a hamburger should be, and more — and a bargain to boot at $2.90.
It arrived hot with dill pickles, sided with fresh onion, tomato and lettuce. El Cap's burgers have an old-fashioned taste to them, handmade, homemade from fresh-ground beef everyday, the primo kind of hamburger sold in sleepy hamlets all over the country, but increasingly hard to find as they are supplanted with mass-produced, chain competitors.
A plastic basket overflowing with a hefty pile of fries came with it, along with a creamy, mayo-heavy dish of coleslaw ($1.35). The restaurant's humble decor seems to endow the burgers with added appeal. Here you can indulge in multiple American obsessions at once. You can chow down on one of El Cap's terrific medium-rare burgers, watch sports on one of 13 televisions and drink cold beers.
El Cap tends to attract a mixed clientele, from business-suited gents at lunch to grizzled bar geezers to coeds and young families with kids. Service is quick and friendly, and you can either sit outside at patio tables or inside at the bar. Tables set in two more dining rooms, along with a big screen TV, snake north from the bar. The restaurant serves wine and beer but no liquor.
El Cap's second-generation owner is Mary Jean Bonfili. Mercifully, though, not much has changed over the years since her in-laws bought the place in 1963; its fare is based upon her relatives" original recipes.
If you happen to be the rare individual who does not care for burgers, you"ve still got a distinguished option in Cap's excellent chili ($2.50 cup, $2.90 bowl): Heavy with ground meat, beans, it's seriously tomato-y. Infused with chili pepper, it goes down great, leaving a subtle, slow and smoky burn in your mouth.
"Old-fashioned food at old-fashioned prices," Bonfili explained. What a combination!
Jimmy Mac's Marina Restaurant
A restaurant whose specialty has always been fat burgers, Jimmy Mac's boasts 30 different kinds, everything from plain all the way to Cajun, barbecued and even one called the Hong Kong (all $4.95), heavy with pineapple and green pepper, and spritzed with soy sauce.
They are huge, each patty weighing 7 ounces, grilled over flame and tucked inside a seeded Kaiser roll. Or, if you"re really hungry, try the "Bigger Mac" sandwich, a hunk weighing in at a full pound ($7.95). The sandwiches arrive in a plastic basket overflowing with steak fries or potato chips, onion, lettuce and tomato, pickle, and the restaurant also offers liquor, wine or beer with which to wash it down.
Jimmy Mac's has been around for decades, for many years located near Howard Avenue and Kennedy Boulevard. In 1996, its owner, Jimmy McNorrill, moved Jimmy Mac's inside Imperial Marina, where it continues to draw the same crowd — burger lovers and boozers, office parties of women, couples and golf foursomes on their way home from the links.
The bartender makes a mean margarita ($4.95), cold and tangy with lime, a tropical snow of salt crystals rimming the glass. The bar is always buzzing, especially around happy hour (4-7 p.m. Monday-Friday) when the restaurant puts out an elaborate selection of free hot and cold hors d"oeuvres to help its patrons end the business day and segue into Party Time.
A warning to nonsmokers — though cigarette smoking is restricted to the bar, which is physically cordoned off from inside dining rooms, the odor continues to permeate the place. For those of you bothered by the smell, there's an appealing alternative: a big patio in back facing the marina, its boats sloshing in their traces, the muscular hump of the Gandy Bridge retreating into a panoramic vista of the western sky.
My dinner companion's European burger ($4.95), melted Cheddar cheese piled with bacon, was yummy, its meat patty charbroiled to a crisp outside, and achingly soft and tender inside. I had one complaint: I couldn"t tell much difference between a burger ordered medium rare and one ordered medium well — the former should show pink inside.
My Morningstar Farms meat-free burger ($5.95), made from carrots, broccoli, cauliflower and soybeans, among other things, was just awful; it was torture to have to watch my dinner companion snarf down a real beefy burger, its hot juices and dripping Cheddar running onto the plate, while I was stuck with flame-grilled Styrofoam. J. Alexander's, in Tampa, makes homemade veggie burgers. Perhaps Jimmy Mac's should find out the recipe.
The steak fries that came with the burgers were pretty ordinary, as was aCaesar salad ($3.50, small). The appetizer of mushrooms ($5.95) featured 'shrooms stuffed with very little crab meat and coated with lots of breading; a slice of Key lime pie ($3.75) had filling suffering from too little Key lime flavor and a limp Graham cracker crust.
My favorite non-burger dish was an appetizer called langostino Chablis ($6.75), bits of lobster and shrimp set in a smooth cheese sauce, and served hot with fresh buns for dipping. At lunch, the dish is available as an entree ($8.75), served with salad and potatoes. The restaurant also offers full dinners, steaks, seafood, pasta, dinner salads and even has a separate banquet room that seats 60.
So let's give it up for the hamburger, its portability, its simplicity, its status as an American icon that inspired everything from Wimpy music boxes to Claes Oldenburg's 1962 painted sailcloth piece of modern art, and, finally, for its plain juicy good taste.
Contact food critic Sara Kennedy at sara.kennedy@weeklyplanet.com or call 813-248-8888, ext. 116.
This article appears in Nov 6-12, 2002.