Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Hamburger Heavens A Good Hamburger Is As Much About Ambience As It Is Beef And Buns; Leslie Kelly Searches For That Ultimate, Total Burger Experience

FROM FOR THE RECORD (Saturday, August 2, 1997): Correction Restaurant open: Corky’s Drive-In restaurant at the corner of Garland and Monroe has re-opened. A story in Friday’s Weekend section reported otherwise.

Boy, do we love our burgers.

Last year, Americans gobbled more than 40 billion of those ground beef sandwiches, mostly in the sterile surroundings of a fast-food chain.

We’ve decided to celebrate National Hamburger Day (officially, it was Monday) with a salute to those underdogs of the burger world - the unabashedly old-time drive-ins.

You know the places. They’ve usually got some funky, ‘50s-style sign bearing someone’s name, so you can picture the man behind the spatula: Frank’s Dairy Freeze, Dick’s, Mike’s Burger Royal … Paul Bunyan?

At the classic drive-ins you dined in your car, but some of these businesses have added inside seating and drive-through windows.

These spots are dwindling in numbers, threatening to go the way of the mom and pop corner grocery and the dime store. This past year alone, Norma’s Burger Barn closed, the Longhorn Burger Stop is no more and Corky’s called it quits. With Michael Jordan and the like pushing two burgers for two bucks on nationally televised ads, it’s tough for the little guy to compete with chains.

Still, fiercely loyal regulars are willing to pay a bit more at their favorite drive-in for food that’s cooked fresh to order. They appreciate the little differences that give the menu some personality - containers of secret sauce, fresh sliced tomatoes, lettuce that is crunchy and cold, French fries that are hand-cut from real potatoes.

I recently spent days searching for the best burgers, fries and shakes around. To avoid a double bypass, I decided to enlist the help of a few burger-loving buddies.

One guy makes a daily pilgrimage to the golden arches and has pictures of burgers tacked up on the wall of his office, so I’m going to call him Big Mac. My Midwestern-born gal pal’s car is often decorated with wrappers (and toys) from another fast-food chain. She’ll be known as The Burger Queen.

Then, there’s my insatiable friend who works in Coeur d’Alene. After we’d already stuffed ourselves, he insisted on stopping at the famous Hudson’s because he believes their burgers are the absolute best. Even though Hudson’s doesn’t appear on this Top 10 list because it’s not a drive-in, he said I should use their sandwiches as the standard by which to judge all other burgers. I’ll call this fella The Bottomless Pit.

With my team of research assistants, I visited more than a dozen places and came up with my favorite burger joints (along with a huge case of heartburn). Now, get out there and show your support for those hard-working, independent burger jockeys.

1. Frank’s Dairy Freeze. So, this place is a dive, with tables in need of a wipe down and Naugahyde seats that are split and leaking their stuffing. But man, the food is good.

The original Dairy Freeze was on Hamilton and was run by Frank Matire’s dad who bought the business in the late ‘50s. (It changed hands in the late ‘80s and is now Arnie’s.) Frank’s brother has Lenny’s Drive-In out in Cheney. This family clearly has burgers in its blood.

Big Mac and I overheard Frank telling one of his customers that he had been flipping burgers since he was 12. It showed.

His double Whammy was a glorious, three-napkin mess wrapped in wax paper. A couple of patties cooked just right on a tasty French roll were slathered with mayo, mustard and ketchup, but it was the lettuce and tomatoes that really impressed BM.

“That part of the sandwich is really cold, like it should be,” he said.

The fries were fresh, not frozen. So they were extra crispy.

The chocolate shake was fantastic - blended before your eyes behind the counter. That meant that it wasn’t so thick that you couldn’t sip it through the straw. It was also super chocolaty. For its fruit shakes, they use real fruit, not syrup.

By the way, John Stockton was in last summer and ordered a triple Whammy.

2. Roger’s Homemade Ice Cream in Coeur d’Alene is so darned cute. The little red-and-white building on Sherman has been around since the 1940s. A neatly kept outdoor seating area was shaded and surrounded by potted flowers.

Most folks come to Roger’s for the scoops of the creamy cold stuff, but the burgers here are mighty tasty, too.

It’s a simple formula: You get your patty, a slice of tomato, slice of onion, pickles and a big piece of iceberg lettuce. The toasted bun is coated in Thousand Island. That combination prompted audible moans of appreciation. The Bottomless Pit was especially impressed with the perfect slice of onion, a sign that the kitchen cares.

The basket of shoestring fries were hot and crispy.

And the chocolate shake deserves to be nominated to the soda fountain hall of fame. It was made with hard ice cream, for starters. Rich, creamy and chocolaty, it erased all memory of those phony-baloney shakes pumped out of a machine.

3. The Thrifty Scotsman has a slew of customers who come in every day. One group even calls itself The Royal Order of Thrifty Scotsman.

The dining room has a stuck-in-the-‘70s feel with rec room-like paneling and gold-swirled mirrors arranged in diamond patterns on the back wall. Look closer and you’ll see photos of softball teams. The smell of cigarettes permeated the place. “Smoking permitted,” reads the sign on the door.

The Burger Queen proclaimed the place “a real joint.”

She loved it even more when the food came because the burgers actually taste meaty. They were hot and juicy. The works here means lots of meat with ham or bacon an option on many of the sandwiches.

I went completely ga-ga over the fries. They’re hand-cut daily. You can see sacks of potatoes behind the counter. The difference between frozen and fresh was immediately apparent. The Scotsman’s taters tasted like the real thing. They were hot and crispy, worth making a special trip. And a big basket is just $1.19.

Floyd Brown and his wife, Karla, have owned the Scotsman since 1980: (“We took it over two days before Mount St. Helen’s blew”). He said they go through 200 pounds of spuds every day.

The Scotsman earns bonus points for making its own tartar sauce, brewing its own iced tea and offering Sno-Cones. It also gets the congeniality award for its friendly counter staff.

4. Dick’s is a Spokane institution. Burger Queen is a longtime fan, but I had never been there in the dozen years of calling Spokane home. It’s unthinkable, really.

There was a huge crowd lined up for lunch last week, and the staff behind the counter was visibly stressed. A couple of kids almost came to blows arguing near the big pile of fries under the warming lights. A supervisor yelled for them to knock it off. It was highly entertaining.

The fries at Dick’s are hand-cut fresh daily and tasted like it. I would love to try them hot out of the fryer instead of just warm. Even so, they were darned good.

The Whammy burger was juicy and flavorful, adorned with just pickles, ketchup and mustard.

The shake was better than average, but the tart lemonade deserves special mention.

One of the owners, Linda Peterson, said they make an effort to give their drinks some character.

“We don’t water down the flavors. A Coke actually tastes like a Coke,” said Peterson, who started at Dick’s as a counterperson in 1967.

At Dick’s, prices are so reasonable, you can truly buy them by the “bagfull.” That filling Whammy will set you back a buck and change. I am personally acquainted with someone who ate four in one sitting.

5. Dean’s in Reardan offers a cool, clean refuge from driving Highway 2 on a sweltering summer day.

There’s the usual line-up of drive-in fare, but the burgers are done well and there’s a huge selection of shake flavors, including huckleberry.

Again, it’s the little things that make the burger stand out: lettuce that’s cold and crunchy, tomato slices and a juicy patty make for a flavorful, somewhat messy meal.

The crinkle-cut fries were hot and crispy.

It was one of the few places I noticed that offered a veggie burger as an option. I got a kick out of it costing more than the meat version.

6. Angel’s is the kind of place you accidentally stumble upon, way out on Trent. It used to be a Norma’s Burger Express.

Order at the window and take a seat at one of the picnic tables. A sign near the menu asks patrons to be patient because all food is cooked to order.

Big Mac picked off his pickles before diving in to the Erik’s Daily Special and was pleasantly surprised to find a nicely grilled bun. That means all the goop doesn’t soak in, causing the bun to disintegrate the minute you lift it to your mouth.

The meat patties on this double decker were juicy and flavorful, though Mac ran into a couple of pebble-size pieces of gristle. Oh well, this is ground beef. Those things happen. It still tasted good.

Bonus points for crispy crinkle-cut fries, but Big Mac marks them down for only serving RC (no Coke or Pepsi) to drink. The shake is fine, fairly chocolaty, but it could be creamier.

I like the nostalgic brown bags at Angel’s with a picture of an old Chevy truck and the names of the proprietors: Angelique and Erik Nelsen.

7. Mike’s Burger Royal has a rich history, run by the same family since the late ‘50s. This burger dynasty started at the original Dairy Freeze on Hamilton. There, in the early ‘50s, Mike Aquino Sr. invented the now-famous stromboli sandwich, with spicy ham, provolone cheese and homemade Italian-style chili sauce.

His son, Mike Jr., has been working at The Burger Royal since 1963. These days, his kids are in the kitchen, too.

In explaining the drive-in’s staying power, Aquino said, “We’ve always tried to give ‘em a good size burger.”

At Burger Royal, the patties are 100 percent beef and the Whammy is king. It’s served on a French roll with chopped lettuce, onions, pickles and lots of mustard. You can ask for a side of the chili sauce if you’re feeling adventurous.

Burger Queen admired the character the rolls added to the sandwich. The burger itself was a bit dry, but overcooked meat seems to be the way a lot of places have gone since the tragic E. coli outbreak of a couple of years ago.

The fries were tasty, but the shake was a weak effort. Not enough chocolate syrup. It was also more icy than creamy with little crystals floating in the mix.

Still, I liked the no-nonsense feel of this drive-in with its rock wall exterior. There are only a couple of picnic tables out front to park your carcass. And they were full on the day we stopped by.

Because we were sharing our bench, we struck up a conversation with a fellow diner.

“They talked me into a Whammy, but it’s so big,” she said. I noticed she managed to polish it off, though.

8. Topper Too is truly a relic. It’s not just the goofy sign with a guy tipping his top hat or the dusty Rock-ola jukebox with hits from The Monkees and Neil Diamond.

This place still has car hops.

Press the button on the speaker to order and you’re instantly transported back to the “American Graffiti” era.

Food is delivered on stainless-steel trays that are pushed out to your rig. Every Monday is classic car night, reinforcing the time warp.

Topper Too is owned by the same man who’s behind the Paul Bunyan, Bob Ovnicek. Topper has been around since 1969 and judging by the crowd at lunch earlier this week, it’s going to be around for some time to come.

Its version of the Whammy comes with the typical fixin’s - mustard, ketchup, mayo, lettuce, tomato, pickle and onions. It’s all piled on a French roll. It was pretty tasty, though the Bottomless Pit said the meat could have been juicier.

The fries were outstanding, not so much because of the spuds, but because of the special secret pink sauce that accompanied them. I know this stuff is some combination of ketchup and mayonnaise, but I’ve never been able to duplicate the flavor at home.

9. The Brown Bag is a relative newcomer on the drive-in scene, so its dining room was the spiffiest of all we visited. It was clean and bright, filled with comfortable booths.

The best thing about this place was the excellent, oversized buns. They were soft and fresh. They actually tasted like home-baked bread.

The burger itself wasn’t all that memorable, but there were other choices that might be more flavorful, including a mushroom and a Cajun burger.

The crinkle-cut fries at The Brown Bag were terrific. I had a long discussion with Big Mac about the virtues of this preparation, wondering if cutting the fries into that zig-zag shape makes them crispier because there is more surface of the fry. Deep thinking, to be sure.

The Brown Bag lets customers help themselves to its version of secret sauce. It was flecked with black pepper and it was dee-lish.

10. Paul Bunyan has been welcoming folks to Coeur d’Alene since 1952 with a wink and a wide grin.

When current owner Bob Ovnicek wanted to knock down the old quarters and renovate, he instructed architects to build around the sign.

“We couldn’t move it because it wouldn’t pass the current sign ordinance,” he said.

Thank goodness it stayed.

The burgers here are decent, the fries fine, but it’s the shakes that keep me coming back.

There are something like 25 different flavors. Each week a different one is featured on special for 89 cents.

This week, you can cool off with a black pineapple shake in the shadow of the tall timberman from Minnesota. Yah sure, you betcha.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 3 Photos Drawings of a hamburger, milkshake and fries

MEMO: Did we miss your favorite drive-in? Let us know what’s so special about your beloved burger joint and we’ll print reader responses in an upcoming issue of Weekend. Send your picks to Leslie Kelly, The Spokesman-Review Features Department, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99202 or fax them to (509) 459-5098.

This sidebar appeared with the story: BURGER JOINTS Angel’s Drive-In, 11923 E. Trent, 926-6188. Brown Bag Drive-In, 1221 N. Pines Road, 922-5162 Dean’s Drive-In, Highway 2, Reardan, (509) 796-3911. Dick’s, 10 E. Third, 747-2481. Frank’s Dairy Freeze, 918 E. Sprague, 536-9204. Paul Bunyan’s Pak-Out, 602 Northwest Blvd., Coeur d’Alene, (208) 664-2725. Mike’s Burger Royal, 6115 E. Trent, 534-3113. Roger’s Homemade Ice Cream, 1224 Sherman Ave., Coeur d’Alene, (208) 765-5419. Thrifty Scotsman, 12024 E. Sprague, 928-2214. Topper Too, 2812 N. Government Way, Coeur d’Alene, (208) 664-2423.

Did we miss your favorite drive-in? Let us know what’s so special about your beloved burger joint and we’ll print reader responses in an upcoming issue of Weekend. Send your picks to Leslie Kelly, The Spokesman-Review Features Department, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99202 or fax them to (509) 459-5098.

This sidebar appeared with the story: BURGER JOINTS Angel’s Drive-In, 11923 E. Trent, 926-6188. Brown Bag Drive-In, 1221 N. Pines Road, 922-5162 Dean’s Drive-In, Highway 2, Reardan, (509) 796-3911. Dick’s, 10 E. Third, 747-2481. Frank’s Dairy Freeze, 918 E. Sprague, 536-9204. Paul Bunyan’s Pak-Out, 602 Northwest Blvd., Coeur d’Alene, (208) 664-2725. Mike’s Burger Royal, 6115 E. Trent, 534-3113. Roger’s Homemade Ice Cream, 1224 Sherman Ave., Coeur d’Alene, (208) 765-5419. Thrifty Scotsman, 12024 E. Sprague, 928-2214. Topper Too, 2812 N. Government Way, Coeur d’Alene, (208) 664-2423.