Hamburger America (10 page)

 

 

“M
ost people don’t want to eat with a lot of loud music. It’s just part of our culture,” a regular for four decades named Marshall Brown told me as we sat at the counter of this 50-year-old Washington, DC, landmark chili restaurant. Marshall was referring to the sounds of Bob Marley and Luther Vandross that were oozing out of the jukebox, not necessarily loud, but definitely present. One time when I was enjoying a breakfast chili cheeseburger, the guy next to me at the counter was eating his eggs, so consumed by the music that he started dancing in his seat. I’m positive that moving to the music made the food taste that much better.

Ben’s was opened in 1958 by Ben and Virginia Ali in a former silent movie theater known as the Minnehaha. Ben, who had emigrated from Trinidad, met his wife at the bank just down the street. “She was a bank teller,” the couple’s son Nizam told me. Ben passed away in 2009 and Virginia has retired, but two of their sons, Nizam and Kamal, run the restaurant today.

Ben’s is known for its tasty chili that gloriously adorns hot dogs, half smokes, and hamburgers. The bright, airy, neighborhood restaurant, with its incredibly colorful façade, also serves a memorable breakfast, but many return from all corners of the country for their chili dogs and burgers. Over the years it also became known for the role it has played in Black American history. Ben’s fed many celebrities performing at the clubs along the U Street corridor in the ’50s and ’60s, including Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, and Cab Calloway.

The 1968 riots sparked by the assassination of Martin Luther King started just a block away when someone threw a brick through a drugstore window. The riots devastated the neighborhood, a curfew was imposed, and the city shut down while attempting to restore order. But Ben’s remained open by special police permission to feed firefighters, police, and members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee located just across the street. When they did close for the night, Ben stayed behind to protect the business from looters. “He kissed my mom goodnight, sent her home, and sat inside with a gun all night,” Nizam told me. To identify the restaurant as a black business Ben painted the words SOUL BROTHER across the front window.

Ben’s survived the riots, the crack hell of the’70s and ’80s, then the construction of a Metro extension that cut off traffic on U Street for almost five years. “We had two employees and were making only about $200 a day during that time,” Nizam told me. “The construction was more devastating than the drugs.” Massive publicity from Bill Cosby and other black luminaries kept the business alive during the bad times. Cosby and his wife had many dates there while he was stationed in the Navy nearby.

Today Ben’s thrives. Even the Clintons are fans. Nizam told me, “We sent a lot of takeout over to the White House when they were in office.” President Obama paid a visit in 2009 and indulged in their famous chili dog (and humorously complained when he noticed that the guy sitting next to him had cheese and he didn’t). The U Street corridor is in the midst of a revival and the new Metro stop is directly across the street. There must be twelve people behind the counter and the atmosphere is lively and fun, with all of the employees joking and flirting with each other. The large front room with its long counter and booths gives way to two more rooms that are somewhat hidden from view. The enormous dining room in the back has a projector and screen and the walls are lined with adoring photos of a virtual who’s-who in Black America. One great photo shows Cosby and Al Green smiling, the front window of Ben’s as their background.

The burgers are quarter-pound patties and arrive fresh daily from a supplier in Baltimore. The chili that goes onto the burger is a simple family recipe that contains only finely ground meat in a dark red, tangy sauce. The burger comes on a toasted bun in a plastic basket with a side of potato chips. If you need more, go for a chili dog, or better yet, the sublime chili cheese fries.

Ben’s is a successful family business that has endured incredibly hard times. “We’ve gotten the most ridiculous amount of press, more than we could ever dream of,” Nizam pointed out. Then, remembering the importance of having a fan like Bill Cosby, he said “this place is a big part of his history.” I’m sure Ben’s is also a big part of the collective histories of all of the diners who have passed through its doors, and the future stories that have yet to be written there.

 

 

J
ohnny Cash on the jukebox, cheap beer on tap, and copious amounts of taxidermy on the walls . . . sounds like a recipe for your favorite country crossroads bar. But the bar is the Tune Inn and it’s only steps from the Library of Congress and the Capitol Building in our nation’s capital. It’d be easy to assume the country bar trappings are an urban design choice, but all of the stuffed game was bagged by the three generations of the Nardellis, owners of the Capitol Hill watering hole since 1955. This place is the real deal—a comfortable neighborhood dive bar with an excellent burger on the menu.

“I shot that one. That’s my first doe,” Lisa Nardelli told me, pointing to a stuffed deer head directly over the bar. Lisa is young and
pretty and doesn’t strike you as the hunting type. Her grandfather, Joe Nardelli, hunted most of the stuffed game, ranging from deer to squirrels to pheasant. “They would get drunk and shoot at anything,” Lisa said of her father, Tony, and grandfather hunting together. Mounted over the bathroom doors in the rear of the narrow tavern are the other ends of deer. “That’s my grandfather’s sense of humor—deer asses over the bathrooms.” The collection is so vast that the local Shakespeare theatre once borrowed a bunch of the Nardelli’s stuffed birds for a production of
King Lear
.

Lots of well-known politicos and other Capitol Hill heavies have been drinking and eating at the Tune Inn for the last five decades. One of the most famous couples in American politics, James Carville and Mary Matalin, had their first date here (they left abruptly because it was too crowded). Janet Reno was a regular (for the
burgers) and JFK the senator had his favorite booth (second one on the left). The bar also hosts regulars who have been coming in for decades. “It’s like a big family, which is unusual in a big city, so close to the Capitol,” Lisa pointed out. It’s also home to countless numbers of students looking for cheap beer and good burgers, yours truly being one of them a few decades back.

The menu is mostly modest comfort food. The burger takes center stage and starts as a six-ounce ball of 80/20 ground chuck. Chef Mike Tate told me, “We use a measured scoop, then form a patty.” The meat is delivered fresh every morning from a local butcher that also supplies the well-known upscale Old Ebbitt Grill, a Washington landmark near the White House. “It’s the same exact meat,” Lisa told me.

The patty is cooked to perfection on a flattop griddle and served on a buttered, toasted bun. The result is a loose, moist burger that melts in your mouth. It really is the perfect bar burger—not so big that you can’t finish your beer and not so small that you go hungry. Following an appearance on the television show
Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives
, a burger that was formerly a specialty item went to the daily menu—the “Beer Batter Burger.” “After the show, everyone who came in wanted one,” bartender Michelle told me. They basically take a griddled burger, dunk it in beer batter, then drop it into the deep fryer.

The Tune Inn was the fifth bar in the District to receive its liquor license after Prohibition was repealed, and today is the oldest drinking establishment on Capitol Hill. During Prohibition the bar served as a speakeasy and regulars have told stories about that time for decades. One day recently, Lisa was wondering about a certain out-of-place wall in the basement. She tapped on it, found it hollow, and proceeded to smash the wall with a sledgehammer. What she uncovered was an indelible piece of American history. “There was a trap door that led to right here,” and she pointed to a spot behind the bar. “Apparently they used to pass the booze through here to the bartender.”

You can visit the Tune Inn for a burger, for a few drinks, or as longtime bartender Susan Mathers believes, for love. “You think I’m kidding. Many people find their own true love at the Tune Inn,” Susan told me with a straight face. “I have observed many people meet and fall in love here.” She looked over at the third-generation Nardelli. “Lisa met her husband here.”

 

 

E
rase any pre-conceived notions you have about the traditional American hamburger. If you find yourself in Miami, get away from the glitz of South Beach, brush up on your Spanish, and prepare for the taste explosion that is the “Frita.” Also known as a “Cuban Hamburger,” the Frita offers one of the most unique hamburger experiences in America. It is unquestionably the most genuine gastronomic expression of the Cuban-American experience.

In the middle of the twentieth century, the Frita was a ubiquitous street food of Havana. By 1959, when the smoke from the Cuban Revolution had cleared, many fled to set up shop in America. As entrepreneurism was squashed in the new Cuba, it flourished in Miami. Today the best examples of the Frita are found not at its birthplace but in its adopted home of South Florida.

In a bright and tidy lunch counter, tucked into a strip mall with only three parking spaces out front, you’ll find, arguably, one of the best Fritas in Miami. The man behind this tasty Cuban treat is the affable septuagenarian Ortelio “El Mago” Cardenas. El Mago opened his lunch counter in 1984 after splitting from his brother-in-law’s successful Miami chain El Rey De Las Fritas. Both restaurants are on 8th Street, aka
Calle Ocho
, which is the main artery through Little Havana in South Miami. Many lunch counters on Calle Ocho serve Fritas but El Mago is in a league of its own.

El Mago’s Frita is made with fresh ground beef and what seemed to be chorizo and several spices mixed into the patty. I sat at the counter one day with friend, guide, and translator, the Florida burger blogger Burger Beast, Sef Gonzalez, and asked El Mago what else was in the patty besides chorizo. He turned from the griddle and shouted with a smile, “No chorizo!” Burger Beast was confused and I was in disbelief. The presence of another red, spiced meat was undeniable, but what was it?