Cheeseburger in Paradise

                Mark is a Jimmy Buffet fan from way back. Even before Buffet became the star he is today, Mark had copies of his early LPs and had seen him in concert. Right before “Come Monday” hit the charts, Mark was one of a handful of people in the crowd at a small concert. Jimmy asked from the stage, “Where do people go and have a beer in this town.” Mark offered up the name of his favorite local college bar.

                Later, after the show, Mark was sitting at that bar having a beer when in would walk, of all people, Jimmy Buffet. The two sat, talked, had a few beers (ok, maybe more than a few) and the next thing Mark knew Buffet was getting super famous and selling out venues.

                Move ahead a few years and Mark and some friends showed up to an outdoor concert at Kings Island amusement park outside of Cincinnati wearing the most outrageous flowered “island” shirts anyone had ever seen. Mark had found his, literally, handmade, in a Russian thrift store in Los Angeles. He still has it though it must have shrunk because it no longer fits.

                He and his friends were part of only about 20 or so fans dressed in outrageous clothes.

                The next year when Buffet played the same venue, the crowd was filled with crazy fans wearing their best “island” gear. Legend has it that bassist Timothy B. Schmidt dubbed that crowd “parrot heads” that night.

               In 2002 Buffet licensed the name of his famous song “Cheeseburger in Paradise” to OSI Restaurant Partners who opened a Buffet themed restaurant and turned it into a chain. Now there are about 40 restaurants in 16 states.

      The one here is located at 812 Eastgate North Dr. and you can find them on line at http://www.cheeseburgerinparadise.com/Default.aspx. They offer up more than just cheeseburgers but we came to see if their burgers really did send us to paradise.

Burgers

                We both ordered the traditional Beach Burger, which is made just like in the song. Both of us passed on the onion.

                The burgers are one third pound, made to order patties of 100 percent ground chuck. They are thick and juicy but ours arrived at the table a little cold, like they had been sitting around waiting to be delivered for a few minutes. That did a great deal to down grade the quality of the meal.

                While sitting around the burger’s juices soaked through the bun a little and made for a more than necessary soggy bottom. And trust us, we both hate it when our bottoms get soggy.

                There’s nothing wrong with a burger that is so juicy that the bun slides around or even starts to disintegrate. But that’s only if the juices are good and piping hot from a burger that’s just off the grill. Not one that has been sitting around five minutes or more cooling off.

                We both could imagine that a nice, hot burger, delivered on time, would have been good. This wouldn’t have been a great burger, nowhere near the top of our favorites list, but it would have been more than respectable, especially for a chain restaurant. But this burger was nowhere near paradise.

                The same problem existed with the fries. They were cool and a big soggy from sitting around too long. There was nothing spectacular about the fries in any case. They appeared to be just ok to begin with and being cool didn’t help. Again, maybe if they were hot we might have taken the restaurant up on their standing offer of “endless” fries with the burger. But in this case, neither of us even finished our original order.

                When we got our food and found it was cool, we seriously looked around the place to determine if it was because the restaurant was too full or the place was understaffed. Neither seemed to be the case. Perhaps ours just happened to be the unlucky order that didn’t get served on time or maybe everyone was suffering the same problem. We didn’t know. But the lack of decent service really did make us regret going there.

                Perhaps sometime this winter when the weather outside is terrible we’ll go back to Cheeseburger in Paradise and give them another try. In the meantime, there are far better burgers to be eaten in this capital of parrot heads.

Hot Doggin' It

                A place named Hot Doggin’ It usually doesn’t come to mind when thinking about burgers. But this establishment, tucked away in a strip mall at 12082 B Montgomery Rd. near Loveland, has a reputation for making not only the closest thing you can find to a Chicago hot dog in this region, but also some fine burgers as well.

                Hot Doggin’ It was started by two Chicago ex-patriots who use to work in the corporate world but decided that their dream was to open and operate a true Chicago hot dog stand. Ava and David Baldwin write on their web site, “Having grown up on the south side of Chicago and later moving to Glenview, a northern suburb or Chicago, I know how a Chicago Hot Dog should be made along with the many other menu items familiar to Chicago’s discriminating taste. That’s where the passion comes in to play. We are a family owned and operated business looking forward to bringing you the best of Chicago’s Vienna Beef products.”

                If you’re not familiar with a Chicago dog, or a Chicago Italian beef sandwich for that matter, you owe it to yourself to check these guys out. Margaret McGurth, a good friend of mine, who hails from Chicago and knows all about traditional Windy City food, has told us this is the closest she’s ever found to a true Chicago hot dog. And that’s Mark’s experience as well. Check them out on the web at http://hotdogginit.com/.

Burgers

                But this isn’t a hot dog blog. This is a burger blog. And so we ventured there to try if their grilled burgers are as good as the dogs.

                We each ordered up a Char-burger with cheese. The one third pound ground beef patties were hand made when we ordered from fresh ground beef. These are not some frozen chain burgers but honest to goodness fresh daily tasty beef that is grilled to order.

                A really delightful part of any small restaurant is being able to hear and smell the sizzle as your burger is being cooked. The small, Chicago themed restaurant allows for this.

                The burgers were perfectly done and had perfectly melted cheese, fresh lettuce, tomato and other condiments. The sesame seed bun was firm enough not to fall apart as the juices flowed from the burger but not so firm to fight you as you bite into this delicious sandwich.

                Beef and condiment flavors lead the way to your taste buds. There doesn’t appear to be any type of exotic seasonings going on with this burger, just honest all-American ground beef. One slight drawback is the fact that this place is still fairly new and the grill probably hasn’t been used enough to be properly seasoned. If this place is still open in 10 years, and hopefully it is, the grill should kiss each burger with the experience of thousands of burgers.

                Between the two of us we asked for one order of fries. That is something to keep in mind. The orders of fries are very large and unless you are a French fry eating machine, one person can’t possibly finish them. In fact, with the size and quality of the burgers, we didn’t even finish the single order we had. The fries are fairly pedestrian. Nothing special. But they were perfectly done with a crispy outside and soft, flavorful middle. Try one without ketchup, that’s always the best way to tell.

                We both highly recommend Hot Doggin’ It for their burgers. We have vowed to go back and review their Chicago dogs even though this is supposed to be a burger blog. Hey, it’s our blog and we can do what we want. Besides, it gives us a valid excuse to head back to Loveland and chow down on some great Chicago style food.

Toot's

                We had been running around Mark’s old stomping grounds out near Loveland and were actually looking for another restaurant that had unfortunately closed before we could sample its wares. So we decided to stop at Toot’s. It was there and we were hungry.

                Neither of us knew much about Toot’s except that it is a small chain of family style restaurants with five locations, three in Tennessee, one in Bowling Green, KY, and one at 12191 Montgomery Rd. in Loveland.

                The Saturday lunch hour when we arrived was pretty quiet with just a few customers. The décor and menu is typical of this style of restaurant. Pick any Friday’s or Applebee’s and you can find much of the same type of items hanging on the wall and grub on the menu.

Burgers

                We both got the Classic Half Pound Burger that the menu claimed was “America’s # 1 sandwich choice.” Not they weren’t claiming that their burger was America’s number one, just that the cheeseburger is the sandwich of choice. Clever wording to make it appear that they’re burger is seen as the best. More on that in a bit.

                Josh opted for the American cheese along with lettuce and tomato. Mark went with the provolone with lettuce, tomato and pickle. The burgers came out and they were big. Quite big. A half-pound patty is going to be big. What it shouldn’t be is overcooked. We know that a lot of restaurants have begun taking away a diner’s choice of how their meat is prepared. Probably from a fear of someone getting sick and then suing.

                What we had was charred well done on a flat top grill with bits of crust rimming the edges. Now since the patty was large it had to be a decent cut. Ground chuck may have shrunk up more than that so our guess was that it was at least ground sirloin. Either that or the fat content was so low (90-10?) that there wasn’t any shrinkage. Of course with low fat content come low flavor and these burgers really didn’t have much flavor.

                For both of us, the cheese and trimmings provided the biggest flavor burst when biting into the burger. The meat may as well have not been there for all the good it did to America’s number one sandwich choice.

                Along with the burgers came curly fries that were the highlight of the meal. Lightly seasoned with a Cajun salt, these tasty little curls of potato way outweighed the sandwich.

                We had good, prompt, friendly service and it is easy to see how the atmosphere of this place could be fun with the right crowd. Unfortunately, neither of us ever plan on going back to see if that’s true.

Zip's Cafe

                If you like a good burger and haven’t ever been to Zip’s Café, what’s wrong with you? Regularly voted on as one, if not the, best burgers in the area, Zips has a long standing tradition of being a funky little neighborhood joint that serves up great food, with friendly service, a cool décor, and, oh yeah, a model train tooting around near the rafters.

                Zip’s has been a landmark in Mt. Lookout since 1926. That’s over 80 years of serving up food to the locals and any other hungry patron who happens along.

                The place is small and cramped and loud and often, no matter what time of the day you stop in, there is a line out the door. But none of that matters. Those of us who have been there many times before know that any little inconvenience is worth it.

                When Josh was learning how to drive, Mark made a deal with him to map out the way to some of the best burger joints in town and then drive there for lunch. Josh got his hours in as a driver, navigating various road challenges and both of them enjoyed some great burgers. Zips was one of the first places chosen for this.

                Located at 1036 Delta Ave. in the middle of Mt. Lookout (and on the web at http://zipscafe.com/), driving here is always a bit of a challenge, especially for a 15-year-old learning how to drive. But even the narrow lanes, the crazy square and fun, adventurous parking couldn’t hamper a hungry Josh that first time or any time since.

Burgers

                While we have both had the Double Zip Burger in the past, this time neither of us felt as though we needed a lunch that could easily fill two people so we settled for the classic Zips Burger. Like all the burgers, that starts with a fresh, never frozen, hand patted quarter pound of beef delivered daily from Bleh-Avril & Sons. It is flame grilled to perfection and served on a fresh honey egg Klosterman’s Bakery bun. Josh got his with American, lettuce and tomato, Mark got his the same but added pickle.

                It’s always a treat biting into that Zips Burger. The softness of the bun with just the right bit of flavor followed by lettuce, tomato and any other garden and condiments, all crispy and juicy in all the right places. But it is that beef that is really the star of this show. You can taste the flavor of the flame and just how fresh and juicy the beef is. It’s like pulling it off the grill in your own back yard.

                So much has been written about Zips Burgers, all of their burgers (and their specialty burgers such as the Girth Burger that’s topped with a split grilled Mettwurst or a Train Wreck that’s topped with shaved ham) that it would be redundant to rave about them here. But it’s hard not to.

                These are as fresh and tasty as any burger either of us has ever had. There are only a handful of burgers that we would put in this same category. It simply is that good.  Add the perfectly fried French fries and you have a great meal any time of the day.

And the prices aren’t bad either. Even the Food Network show Cheap Eats has featured Zip’s Café in a segment. Add to that all of the local publications who regularly name it one of the best burgers in the area and it’s easy to see why it’s always crowded at Zip’s. Well, maybe some folks are there to check out the crazy décor. Yes, look closely, that is the model train in the picture. The cans of beer are just cargo.

                So even though you may wait in line and then get put at a table with a group of folks you’ve never met before, it’s worth it to take a drive to Mt. Lookout for a famous Zips Burger.