Discover Walla Walla

In Chicago, red hots (hot dogs, to the rest of us) are taken so seriously that some of the finer hot dog establishments charge ten cents extra for that little bit of flaky charring the tube steaks get from spending a minute longer on an open grill. But we digress.

What brought this factoid to mind was our trip to Pendleton recently to sample the wares at the Char-Burger, which has, right on its mansard roof, the words "PENDLETONS FINEST." One assumes that there used to be an apostrophe, and either a strong wind or some Roundup revelers removed it, but you never know.

The Char-Burger is approximately 75 percent kitchen and 25 percent dining room, a healthy ratio in our book. (Of course, the Ice-Burg in Walla Walla is 100 percent kitchen, but that's another story.) The dining area has two four-person booths and a short window-facing counter with four stools. The dutch door into the kitchen serves as the order-taking area and cashier's stand, and offers a prime view of the leaping flames on the grill.

Our only disappointment during our visit was that the milkshake machine was out of service. It was one of those days when a milkshake seemed almost mandatory alongside a burger; but it was not to be.

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We're not sure exactly how to defend this confession, but we have spent a dozen or so years in the Walla Walla Valley, luxuriating in everything it has to offer the hedonist and gourmand, and never tasted a Jason Burger.  We know, we know.

At least a few of you are shaking your heads, we can tell, and are wondering if we will be willing to surrender the esteemed Bürgermeister title immediately.

And to further humiliate ourselves, we will disclose right off that the napkin rating for the Jason Burger we ate recently was an unprecented 9.  That's right, nine napkins were required to consume this burger.

We're writing, of course, about the famous burger available at the Tuxedo Bar & Grill in Prescott, a short jaunt from Walla Walla.

Where to begin?  This is a bar with a family dining area, so bringing the kids is not an issue, even if the overall impression is not necessarily kid-friendly.  The block it's on is... unimpressive, shall we say, but for the avid burger hunter, this of course only raises the stakes and makes the appetite swell in anticipation.  Serious burger-safari aficionados always hope to find the elusive burger-in-the-wild, don't we?

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Back in the day, there were three taverns that shared a certain Walla Walla crowd’s affections:  The Red Apple (located where the Coffee Connection currently operates), the Blue Mountain Tavern (now the Blue Mountain Tavern and Casino), and the Green Lantern.  The three handily color-coded venues were affectionately known as the Red, the Blue and the Green.

The Blue has undergone several transformations, the Red just might be the only restaurant no one in Walla Walla really mourned when it finally gave up the ghost many years ago, but the Green has consistently provided a congenial spot to meet friends and have a beer.

Over the last few years, however, the Green Lantern has stepped up the food offerings to include gourmet pizzas and fish tacos, and they starting using Thundering Hooves’ locally-grown, pasture-finished beef for their hamburgers.  The logical extension of all of this is happy news for some of us:  they are open for lunch.

Which brings us to this month’s Bürgermeister’s Blog destination, and a sampling of the Green Lantern cheeseburger.

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After a brief hiatus, the Bürgermeister is happy to be back on the circuit, with a special report from Umapine, OR. Yes, it was time to revisit the Water Hole Tavern and sample the Big Beefy Burger once again.

For Walla Wallans who have been spoiled by the close proximity of everything, the Water Hole can seem like a trek. We'll get the directions out of the way: Take Highway 11 as if you're headed to Milton-Freewater, and make a right at Stateline. Continue on for five miles (you may suspect erroneous directions at this point in your journey, as even the farmhouses start to disappear and you are cruising through vistas of rolling farmland that do not bode well for the hungry), and look for a road on the lefthand side marked only with a green street sign that says "UMAPINE RD." (Now, Google Maps shows this as Umapine Stateline Highway, but we found no on-the-ground corroboration for this.)

Take this road south for two miles and you will find yourself at an intersection with a stop sign. On your far right is a beautiful old school building that, last we heard, was being converted into a foundry. On your left on the opposite side of the road you should be able to see Tate's Mercantile, and the Water Hole is directly on your left on the near side.

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This month we journeyed to the east end of Main Street to check out the Backstage Bistro. Anyone who loves live music knows what a labor of love the Bistro is for owner Bob Parrish, whose appreciation for food and music seeps into everything he does.

Some may have already forgotten his espresso stand (just "The Backstage") in the old Liberty Theater lobby that's part of Macy's-coffee lovers will remember, I'm sure-but it was merely a sign of things to come, and when the Paula Ray Gallery gave up the ghost, he saw an opportunity at the corner Main and Palouse to serve up a few items that were missing on Walla Walla's dining out menu. Good steaks, interesting pasta dishes, slow-cooked barbecue, and, of course, hamburgers.

For a while it seemed like the Backstage Bistro was the only place to find a patty melt in town. In an onion town, that seemed like an oversight.

So we sat down to see how the burger has been faring at the Bistro, and it was happy homecoming indeed. I ordered the Bistro Burger with cheddar, and chose sweet potato fries instead of a salad for accompaniment.

As you can see, the dish is attractively presented, with the burger served on a cornmeal-dusted bun with shredded lettuce and two large slices of tomato on the upper bun. There were pickles hiding under the burger, much to my delight.

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The Yelenich family has owned and operated Fat Cats Tavern & Grill, located on the north side of Main Street (between 6^th and 7^th Avenues) in Walla Walla for many years, and they offer, at the very least, two distinctive pleasures.  One is arguably the wildest proliferation of humorous signs and sayings posted for the amusement of those seated at the bar, and the other is their hamburger. 

I have long considered the Fat Cats hamburger one of Walla Walla's less-widely-known treasures, and have enjoyed introducing friends to its delights.  Always served with grilled onions, arriving in a wax-paper-lined basket with a pickle and a small cup of a cold deli salad (I recommend the potato salad), there is something reliably wonderful about this burger.  They are very consistent in their preparation, so that if you develop a fondness for it as I have, it will be the same the next time you come in for one.  It sounds funny, but there are many reasons why a unique, family-owned, small-town grill might not want or be able to sustain a high level of consistency of preparation from one visit to the next.  But the Yeleniches can and do.

I was surprised to find that this burger turned out to be a four-napkin burger (I was expecting, from memory, a two- or three-napkin burger experience), and for this reviewer, that's a good thing.  If you are a soda pop person, it may be of interest to you that they serve it in cans with a glass of ice, rather than pouring from a tap.  Again, a focus on consistency.

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My love affair with hamburgers started as soon as I was tall enough to reach the snack bar counter at the beach club where I spent my childhood summers. There was simply nothing like 'em, and those unpretentious classics are primarily responsible for the strong preference I have for certain burger-preparation traditions over others to this day.

Let me get some basics out of the way: a burger should be cooked over strong enough heat, whether on an open or closed grill, that it develops a certain firmness of texture on the outside, but it should be removed from the heat while still pink and tender at the center. Both while the patty is being formed and while it is cooking, it should be handled, whether by hand or spatula, as little as absolutely necessary, in order to preserve its soft texture and its juiciness.

I am not a burger purist; I think that condiments are absolutely critical to a burger's greatness, and a properly-dressed burger will tend to be somewhat messy to eat - in fact, I count napkins when eating a burger.

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