Baseball and Burgers

In a word?

YES.

(The above goofy formatting is intentional in order to offset the “Chip’s Grill Open” picture’s prominent placement, which has already been accomplished due to me blathering on and this sentence being so long. Hell, at this point it didn’t even end up being goofy. Whatever. Take that Mrs. Broyles, the woman who failed me in AP English to teach my ornery ass a lesson. Thank you by the way, you changed my life immensely by teaching me the value of doing things according to proper process. Do me a favor, if possible – comment and point out the innumerable errors in this post. Validate me, please. I double dog dare you.)

When building a “Best Burger In Cincinnati” list, Herb & Thelma’s perfectly fits the darkhorse role. Unless someone has told you about this dingy little hole in the wall, chances are you’ll never end up there. If you HAVE been enlightened to its existence and manged to wander in you undoubtedly have a all/nothing view on the place; If you haven’t ended up there via direct word of mouth chances are you were disappointed. If you happen to be of the persuasion of our group however, Herb & Thelma’s is a rarity that deserves to be appreciated and lauded for its simplicity and old fashioned charm.

For those of us among the original RR Burger Tour Crew, Herb & Thelma’s holds a special place in our heart. It’s been a meeting place for us for a couple of years now, a haven away from the douchebaggery of Newport On The Levee or the stuffiness of Mt. Adams. The bulk of Herb & Thelma’s appeal lies in its simplicity – it’s located in a nondescript building in old Covington, in the turn before you head north into the area where the kids good at football go to school and dead center among the people who bust their ass in the hopes that their kid might one day go to school up the hill. This is the place where locals gather to shoot the shit about local things, brag about the local kids, and bitch about the way things aren’t the way they were when they were kids.

All that said, Herb & Thelma’s makes one hell of a burger, although it’s hard to put a finger on why it’s so great. Logically speaking, H&T should never be in the Best of Cincinnati discussion. It’s an incredibly simple (albeit very tasty) cheeseburger served in the dive-iest of all dive bars. Where Herb & Thelma’s works its way into the Best Of discussion is simple – they absolutely NAIL the most important category (at least in my opinion) – atmosphere. Herb & Thelma’s cheeseburgers are great and I would never deny that but what sets the place apart is the ambiance, or better yet, the lack thereof. The look in Chip’s eyes as you order is the same whether you’re a local who’s been coming for 25 years you’re a first timer; he smiles, thanks you, looks down, and serves up the burger he’s been serving for god knows how long.

It’s incredibly hard to put into words, the feeling of “being home”. Eating a cheeseburger at Herb & Thelma’s gives you the same comfort level you have at a birthday or holiday gathering after the oddball guests leave and it’s just you and your closest friends and family sitting around, talking about the embarrassing thing Joe-Just-Left did two summers ago when you took him out on the boat and he drank too much. You can laugh out loud, and you can laugh REALLY loud. No one will look at you funny, like you’re somehow impeding their meal by having a good time. Hell, if anything, they’ll give you the cursory laugh and ask what was so damned funny. These are the people who make the world turn, and you feel that when you go to Herb & Thelma’s.

EDIT: Something very important to note – Herb & Thelma’s is a cash only establishment, so hit the ATM on the way since there aren’t any around the place itself.

Throw a really good burger into the mix and you have a new #1 on the BnB Burger Tour. Individual rankings/opinions after the jump.

Meat: 8.8

Bun: 6

Toppings: 8

Sides/Beers: 6.8

Atmosphere: 9.2

Price/Value: 9.6

Overall: 17

TOTAL: 65.4

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Our latest review takes us to Hyde Park, where one of the most popular burger spots in town lies.  A few absences brought the crew down to 7 for this one, but it was more than enough.  Of the places we’ve reviewed so far, this is the first that it usually mentioned in the “best burger in Cincinnati” conversation, so let’s get to it.

I arrived to an almost full table, which is always a nice way to enter a BnB outing.  While we ordered beers and plotted our Burger Madness toppings (more on this later), we were surprised to see a commotion on the other side of the restaurant.  As it worked its way over to our side of the restaurant, we realized who it was… it was this guy.

Sure enough, Cincinnati mayor Mark Mallory was in the restaurant enjoying a burger at one of the best places in town.  He whisked around the place like he had important city-running things to do, but made  a couple of seconds to stop and greet our crew of fine upstanding Cincinnatians.  Well, almost.  He gave a head nod to BnB’er Scott because they knew each other somehow, but it still counts.

The thing that Arthur’s is known for is it’s “Burger Madness” burger special, available on Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays.  It’s a pretty sweet deal if you like to try interesting toppings on your burgers; $7.50 for a burger (with fries) and any kind of topping you can think of.  The only topping that we got upcharged for was Boursin cheese, which falls under their “gourmet toppings” category (but it was totally worth it).

Hit the jump for a few photos and what we thought of the place…

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The BnB boys and broad (love you Ash!) decided that Zola Pub and Grill would be our next stop so we descended upon Mainstrauss like well, a group of white people between the ages of 25-40 looking for beer and food. Wow, it sounds positively pedestrian when I say it like that, doesn’t it?

How about we play trivia instead? Question – What could possibly render our normally raucous group nearly speechless, speaking only in hushed tones and semantics? Read on to find out.

I arrived in Mainstrauss around 7:15 and met Scott and Bill on the bottom floor, which seemed busy for a Tuesday night. Zola is a charming place like most of the bars in the area, and the bartender was very nice and helpful. The downstairs area is small and once everyone arrived it was obvious that we couldn’t be accommodated in that space so we moved upstairs. The upstairs was the classic overflow area, sparsely equipped but completely functional. The wait staff did a good job making sure we were properly served and entertained with the television programming options we desired, so we moved on to ordering our burgers. My only complaint with the upstairs area is that smoking is prohibited despite it being allowed downstairs; how does that make sense?

Burgers were cooked, delivered, and eaten but the great part of the night happened after everyone was done eating and we were sitting around chewing the fat and telling lies. We had been fortunate to that point in time to have had the entire upstairs area at our disposal and had taken full advantage, all of us acting the fool at some point. I happened to be seated facing the outside windows away from the stairway leading downstairs, so I was confused when the entire table seemed to be rendered speechless simultaneously. This of course led me to look behind me which revealed the recent addition to our area, a couple of Covington PD’s finest being seated behind us. The cops had come in for dinner and suddenly I’m seated amongst the 2nd Choir, it was amazing. I have since hatched a plan to bring my retired-state-cop dad to future burger meetups just to get people to shut up so I can be heard. You’re cool with that, right dad? (If my dad actually reads this and posts a comment to this story, I will do something outrageous. I’m pretty sure he thinks a blag is what comes after an alog.)

On to the Review. The general consensus is that Zola serves a pretty good burger but they need to work on cooking the burger to order and getting it out a little quicker. The sides were great, with the Unique Slaw being a huge hit. Pictures and reviews after the jump.

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This tour stop happened outside of our normal bi-weekly schedule, but I suppose an unorthodox post is appropriate for an unorthodox burger stop, which is exactly what Cafe de Wheels is.  Jeremy and I saw on Twitter that this burger truck with a growing reputation was making a lunch stop in the part of town where he and I both work, so it made perfect sense to check it out.

We didn’t really have to wait in line, and only had to wait around 5-10 minutes for our food.  However, this wasn’t downtown, so I’m not sure if that’s the norm, but from that aspect it was a convenient lunch option, especially since it was about 1500 feet from my office.  I ordered a regular Wheels burger and Jeremy went with one with only cheese and bacon on it (since he’s apparently anti-toppings), but he made up for it with getting feta fries where I just went with the original.  It’s worth mentioning that their menu is pretty extensive overall, and that both of us tried pretty basic offerings, as neither of us had tried it before. Here’s how we scored it:

The averages of our two scores:

Meat – 7

Bun – 5.5

Toppings – 6.5

Sides – 8.5

Atmosphere – 7.5

Price – 7

Overall (x2) – 14.5

TOTAL SCORE: 56.5

Brandon (Wheels burger and fries): 58/80
“Meat was of a better quality than I expected. Bun was over toasted, but had a good ratio of bun to burger. The bacon was fine on it, but the cheese was unspectacular and the “onion marmalade” was either not flavorful or not present. Not normally a big fan of steak fries, but these were pretty good. Bottom line, if I was hungry and came across the Cafe de Wheels truck again, I wouldn’t hesitate to have it again so I could try something else.”

Jeremy (plain Wheels burger and feta fries): 55/80
“Meat was cooked properly, but had an odd texture. Bun was overly toasted, to the point of crispiness. Feta fries were outstanding. Pretty clean for a food truck, with quick order turnaround. Overall it wasn’t bad, but not world changing either.”

What do you guys think?