The Juicy Lucy.
It seems these days you can't go anywhere without some restaurant trying to sport this creation on their menu. Often duplicated, never replicated, this concoction of melted cheese sandwiched... nay, buried like a treasure between two fused pieces of good ol' American ground beef has become a part of Minnesotan popular culture.
Of course, who has the best is up for debate. The "original" creators of the Juicy Lucy at the 5-8 Club or the "original" creator of the Juicy Nooky at the Nook Bar & Grill. That is a debate for another time. Leave these squabbles for the Travel Channel. My time too valuable. My hangover, too imposing.
Not want to venture all the want towards the Airport for the original 5-8 location in Minneapolis, I venture to the far more friendly, or so I thought, location in Champlin, Minnesota.
Don't call it Champlin Park. That's the name of the high school. And for some reason they take serious offense to it.
I think they need to take it a bit more likely, like those local wacky kids in Shoreview that kept stealing the S off of the town sign, even though it was bolted down. (W)horeview. That's good stuff.
This location is simple. The decor not unlike a mashed together sports bar and Ground Round. Wait, that doesn't sound good at all. Screw it, I'm going (thanks Alec Baldwin).
The menu is what one would expect from a greasy spoon diner. A lot of meat. A lot of cheese. There are entree options beyond the "famous" hamburgers like chicken, pork tenderloin (called "The Hangover", tempting in my current state of mind), salads, ribs, shrimp, etc.
I didn't come here for that. Not sure why anyone would come here for that. I want carbs. And I want fat. And I want an appetizer with both. How about the Cheese Dip and Pretzels.
Sounds like what it is. A plate of homemade, maybe, soft preztels and a soup cup full of pipping hot spiced melted cheese. Good for dippin'. Good for drinkin'. Good for showin' God you aren't afraid of Coronary Artery Disease.
Then to the Juicy Lucy herself. A half pound stuffed burger filled with the cheese of your choice. Choose from good old neon orange American, something called Amablu Bleu, Pepper or Swiss. My being an expert at choosing just the right thing on the menu lead me to opt for the Amablu Bleu.
Bleu cheese is great on buffalo wings. It is very good on salad. It is even good crumbled on top of a burger. Not so much when a ladle full is sitting in wait inside of a burger waiting to scald my epiglottis with lava that is far too overpowering.
It is far too strong of a cheese to have with this burger. Go Patriotic and stick with the American.
It is a good burger. The service is like you would expect at a greasy spoon. Of course, need I mention that this isn't a greasy spoon. Just one disguised as a restaurant.
Perhaps mid-afternoon on a Sunday isn't the best time to go, but I was forced- yes, forced- to listen to the classless boar that seemed to be a manager or supervisor by the way he was talking so casually and with so much profanity to the staff (while creepily trying to give a shoulder massage to a young woman) drone on and on about how he knew everything and everyone.
He spoke too loud, he laughed to hard. Trying to convince the entire bar that he was fun and smart while achieving neither.
*Note: the writer of this article is an idiot and speculates on things that may or may not be the truth. The smarter side of the writer's brain would like to point out that this man may in fact have been an overly excited patron or a wandering Nomad like Lorenzo Lamaze in The Renegade. There is nothing to support that he was endorsed or employed by the 5-8 Club in Champlin.
But I digress, this actually has nothing to do with the actual food itself, though it did leave a bitter taste in my mouth.
So- if you skipped the title of this article- what did I actually think of the food at the 5-8 Club? Well, the pretzels and cheese tasted like a pretzel and cheese. The Juicy Lucy tasted like a burger stuffed with cheese. The side order of Jo-Jos (the canoe shaped and sized french fries) were tender and arguably the biggest stand out.
You get what you order here. There are no surprises. The food is good, not great. I didn't eat anything and realize that there had been invented the longer lasting lightbulb or the 100-mile to the gallon car. This isn't food that was made better. It is just good food. The prices are reasonable. The ambiance is confusing.
Never had a cheese stuffed burger? Go ahead and check it out, you can do a far cry worse. But I will hold my final judgement about who has the best "original" stuffed burger until I find myself in The Nook.
Sorry no Hemmingway or Thompson references this week. Too sick. Too tired. Too stupid to figure out how to get them in there.
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