by George Motz
When I first found this burger outpost south of Omaha it was a ramshackle place on a hill surrounded by a dusty gravel parking lot. You could barely make out the name of the restaurant haphazardly spelled out in vinyl lettering on the front window. Today, the dirt lot is now paved and the entire restaurant has received a much needed facelift. In 2007 Stella’s son, Al, and his wife, Mary, sold the decades-old restaurant to cousin Stephanie Francois. The restaurant is now run by Stephanie with the help of her parents Gene and Pam Francois. Stella’s Hamburgers remains a family business after all these years.
Tiny Stella Francois Sullivan Tobler opened the sunroom at the front of her home to burger lovers in 1936. Within a few years, her home had morphed into a restaurant with a gas station and a general store. She purchased the bar next door and in 1949 purchased a plot of land a mile away and moved both the house and bar. The bar became the restaurant, and the house and sunroom went back to being a home, and since then nothing much has changed. Look for the portrait of Stella hanging near the bar with the inscription OUR FOUNDER.
The burgers have increased in size since Stella’s time from 5.2 to 6.5 ounces. Fresh ground beef is delivered to the restaurant, portioned, and made into patties daily. Frozen patties are not an option at Stella’s and as Gene pointed out, “We go through so much that it would be impossible for it not to be fresh.”
The burger at Stella’s is an explosion of grease and flavor. Stella’s granddaughter, Lisa, told me once, “You don’t come to Stella’s because you are watching what you are eating.” It’s served on an impossibly soft white pillow of a bun with lettuce, tomato, pickles, and a choice of either grilled or raw onion. Both top and bottom halves of the bun receive a generous layer of mayonnaise, and the burger is delivered no-nonsense on a paper napkin. Stella believed that good food didn’t need to be fancy.
The menu has changed slightly under the new ownership and a new burger “challenge” has been added called the “Stellanator.” If you can finish this 6-patty burger that stands over a foot tall, you’ll get your name on the “Wall of Fame” and eat for free. If you can’t finish, you’ll have to pay for your meal. “Over 40 have tried,” Gene told me, “but only 2 have finished it so far.
Stella’s son, Al, took over the restaurant in 1974, and Stella continued to come in daily. “She worked up to three days prior to her death,” Lisa told me. Al still comes into the restaurant just like Stella did in her retirement.
Stella’s today may look very different but rest assured the same cast-iron griddle and practices are in place. Gene put it best when he told me, “Stella made it simple to follow in her footsteps.”
23
NEW HAMPSHIRE
GILLEY’S PM LUNCH
175 FLEET ST | PORTSMOUTH, NH 03801
603-431-6343 | WWW.GILLEYSPMLUNCH.COM
TUE–SUN 11:30 AM–2:30 AM | MON 11:30 AM–6 PM
“You can always tell that it’s someone’s first time here when they pull the door like that,” short-order chef Bambi told me. I had trouble getting in the front door of this six-decade-old diner because the door is not normal. It slides open like a pocket door, revealing one of the most beautiful hidden gems in all of New England.
Gilley’s PM Lunch is an old Worcester diner. In the first half of the twentieth century, the Worcester Lunch Car Company of Worcester, Massachusetts, was the premier supplier of mobile lunch carts and prefabricated diners. Their distinct design set the precedent for all diners that followed in America.
Gilley’s is now permanently situated on a lot donated by the City of Portsmouth, but prior to 1973 the cart was towed out to the center of town and served food to late-night workers and other hungry people until the wee hours of the morning. There was a time in America, especially in New England, when carts like this were everywhere at night. Many of them were Worcester diners and very few exist today. Gilley’s is one of the last.
Though slightly modified, Gilley’s retains its barrel-shaped roof and enamel steel paneled interior, and its kitchen still occupies one narrow end of the car. It’s a true step back in time with its tiny griddle and eight stools lining the wood-framed windows. New owner (as of 1993) Stephen Kennedy told me, “I had to take two stools out because it gets pretty crowded in here from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m.” He says sometimes over 40 people are crammed into the tiny diner waiting for their hamburgers and hot dogs. During the late shift Gilley’s can move over 500 burgers.
“Isn’t that beautiful?” a customer said as he tilted his plate showing off his double cheeseburger. Both hamburgers and hot dogs are served at Gilley’s; the hot dogs preceded the burgers by more than sixty years. Starting in 1912, the first owners had a horse-drawn cart with wooden wheels that sold mostly hot dogs. Hamburgers were introduced in the 1970s, and share equal popularity today.
The burger to order at Gilley’s is a bacon double cheeseburger. Gilley’s uses only fresh-ground pattied chuck loin that is 85 to 88 percent lean. The patties are small, thin, and just under 3 ounces. Stephen pointed out that it was done that way traditionally for speed, adding, “A smaller burger cooks faster.” The white squishy bun is toasted and no lettuce or tomato is offered. The tiny fridge next to the minuscule two-foot-square griddle is really only big enough for the day’s hot dogs, hamburgers, and cheese.
In 1996 Stephen attached a construction trailer to the original lunch car to expand the kitchen. This allowed him to add a deep fryer and more refrigeration. Adding a barrel roof to one end of the trailer mimicked the original structure and preserved the integrity of the restaurant. The last truck to pull the mobile diner is still attached to one end of Gilley’s, as are the diner’s wheels, now covered by wood paneling.
“Portsmouth is the kind of place where things don’t change much,” cook Bambi mused as I ate my burger. That’s a good thing, especially when it involves a historically significant slice of Americana like Gilley’s. Thanks to people like Stephen Kennedy this tiny lunch cart may be around forever.
24
NEW JERSEY
HOLIDAY SNACK BAR
401 CENTRE ST | BEACH HAVEN, NJ 08008
609-492-4544 | WWW.HOLIDAYSNACKBAR.COM
OPEN MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND TO LABOR DAY
DAILY 11:30 AM–9 PM
The ocean is only three blocks from the Holiday Snack Bar and you can smell it in the salty air. But once you step inside the tiny, seasonal beach diner the smell shifts to burgers. If you arrive at the peak of summer, there’s a good chance that all of the stools at the counter will be taken. All of these customers, fresh from the beach, will be eating either burgers or one of the Holiday’s signature cakes or pies. High school-aged server Hunter told me, “At lunchtime in the summer this place is packed. There are people up against the wall waiting for a spot.” Most likely this is because the burgers are fresh and the bakery is on the premises.
A large, four-sided knotty pine counter takes up just about all of the real estate in the dining area of the Holiday. In the center, proudly displayed, are homemade pies and cakes that all counter patrons are forced to stare at, making a meal without a slice an impossibility. The kitchen adjacent to the dining area is where most of the menu is produced but in one corner of the dining room sits a tiny 2-foot-square flattop griddle. There’s even a stool at the counter that can’t be more than 3 feet from the griddle, a great front-row seat for the burger-obsessed. “In August the griddle is jammed,” owner Glenn Warfield told me. Glenn and his wife are only the third owners of this Jersey Shore landmark that was opened in 1948 by the Whiting family. Glenn bought the restaurant in the ’80s and with the purchase gained the Holiday’s famous recipes.
Glenn is adamant about preserving the history of the Holiday Snack Bar and is hesitant to change a single thing about the place. One curious phenomenon I noticed at the Holiday was a dual menu system. If you ask for a menu you are handed one whose contents, for the most part, date to 1948. It includes classics like onion rings and burgers but also a strange old-time favorite, the Tomato As
pic Salad. Glenn has added items to the menu but did not want to add them to the original so he posts these items on a separate menu on the counter. I asked him why he hasn’t merged the menus and he told me, “We don’t want to stir it up too much.”
The classic “Holiday Hamburger” is not the burger to order at the Holiday Snack Bar. Ask for that and you’ll end up with an unadorned three-ounce patty on a toasted white bun. Ask for the double cheeseburger and you are getting somewhere. The ratio of meat-to-cheese-to-bun for this burger is perfect. Be sure to add some house-made sweet pepper relish that sits on the counter in plastic tubs.
One item on Glenn’s separate menu sells as well as the burgers from the original menu—the “Slam Burger.” Lettuce, tomato, and a large onion ring are piled high on a single-patty cheeseburger. A homemade Russian dressing is added and the entire creation is held together with a large toothpick. As you can probably imagine, the additional ingredients dwarf the three-ounce patty so I would suggest a double Slam Burger.
The burgers at the Holiday are made from fresh ground 90/10 lean chuck steaks that are ground in the kitchen daily. After grinding, a team of two use an ancient manual patty press to make the burgers. It’s easy to assume that this contraption pre-dates the electric patty press. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. A large canister holds 15 pounds of ground beef that is extruded through a hole in the bottom. One person handcranks the press while the other slides a plate back and forth on the bottom that has a cutout the size of the patty, effectively “slicing” off a perfect patty every time. Glenn is clearly in the market for a new, fully automated patty, press but I don’t think he’ll be getting one anytime soon. He told me, “We’ve paid mechanics to fix it.” Glenn does not want to change a thing about the Holiday Snack Bar.
The Holiday is run almost entirely by high school and college kids and this is their summer job. When I asked Hunter if she sees orders for the Tomato Aspic Salad, she winced and said, “Never.” Then after a moment said, “The people who do order it go crazy for it. But most people come here for the burgers.”
ROSSI’S BAR & GRILL
501 MORRIS AVE | TRENTON, NJ 08611
609-394-9089 | WWW.ROSSIBURGER.COM
MON–SAT 11 AM–2:30 PM, 5 PM–10 PM
CLOSED SUNDAY
“Now we’ll see if he knows how to eat a Rossiburger!” Sharon Jemison, part owner and Rossi family member, was heckling me and warned, “If you cut it in half, you’re a wuss.” As I stared at the enormous, inch-thick burger, I did the smart thing—I put the knife down.
Most great burger joints have their share of multi-generational family pride, but few are as proud as Rossi’s. Throw in an Italian-American pedigree and you have a recipe for a burger born of unrelenting pride.
In the early 1930s, Michael Alfred Rossi bought a corner soda fountain in the Italian neighborhood of Chambersburg in Trenton, New Jersey, and lived upstairs. When prohibition was repealed in 1933, Rossi promptly turned the fountain into a bar. “Back then,” Sharon told me, “they just had a meatball sandwich [on the menu].” Rossi eventually expanded the menu to include other Italian fare and made a dining room out of the family’s living space. But it was Michael’s son, Alfred Michael Rossi, who would bring their now-famous burger to the menu in the early 1960s.
Al Rossi had a promising career in professional baseball and played for the Washington Senators farm team for 11 years. Just as he was offered a spot on the Philadelphia Athletics roster, his brother shipped off to fight in World War II. Al’s dad told him to leave baseball, come home, and help run the restaurant. In this family, that’s just what you did.
Maybe if Al Rossi had continued on his path to be a major league ballplayer there would be no Rossiburger, a thought most would probably not like to entertain.
There’s only one burger to order at Rossi’s and it is very large and only comes in one size. “That’s the million-dollar question, ‘Can we get a smaller burger?’” Sharon told me, “Nope.”
Don’t be put off by the enormous mound of meat in front of you though. Despite its size, the burger at Rossi’s is moist and loosely packed, its center almost pebbly. It’s actually a breeze to eat, especially if you are hungry.
Rossi’s gets a delivery of fresh-ground 87/13 chuck daily and can go through 250 pounds over the weekend. The burgers are unmeasured but are around a half pound. They are loosely hand-pattied by Rossi family member and head chef Ted and cooked by indirect heat in a steak broiler. Nothing is added, no salt, no pepper, and it’s served on a freshly baked kaiser roll with nothing but a slice of raw onion.
Just about everyone involved at Rossi’s is family. Sharon explained, “When we run out of family, we pull in other people.” Today, Rossi’s is run by Al’s children, Sharon and Michael. They have both been at Rossi’s for almost 40 years. The Chambersburg neighborhood is also like one big family. At one point during my interview with her in front of the restaurant, Sharon stopped a passing car for some fact-checking on the history of Rossi’s.
Thanks to his involvement with professional baseball, Al Rossi had an impressive roster of buddies. Joe DiMaggio was a frequent visitor, as were Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams. Joe D didn’t go to Rossi’s for the burger though, he went to see his good friend Al and have a bowl of his lentil soup. The restaurant is filled with authentic baseball memorabilia and the bar evokes a time when baseball greats might have mingled freely with their fans. For years, a pair of Mickey Mantle’s cleats that were given to Al hung in a corner of the dining room.
Al worked at Rossi’s right up until the day before he died in 2007. “He loved it,” Sharon recalled of her father, “People came here just to talk to him.” Al was involved with the business his entire life and, according to Sharon, “He’d see a pasta dish go out that wasn’t right and he’d send it back.”
WHITE MANNA HAMBURGERS
358 RIVER RD | HACKENSACK, NJ 07601
201-342-0914 | MON–SAT 8:30 AM–9 PM
SUNDAY 10 AM–6 PM
White Manna is, beyond a doubt, one of the most historically important burger joints in America. As the burger business began widespread franchising in the 1960s, most of the tiny burger counters across America were wiped out. Amazingly, White Manna survives and thrives, even with a McDonalds directly across the street.
There was a time in America when the burgers you ate were small and came from a tiny stainless steel or white porcelain paneled diner. Thanks to the success of White Castle in America, most burger counters used the word “white” in their names to convey cleanliness. In the case of this diner, the biblical word “manna” is used, as in bread from heaven.
White Manna is a vintage Paramount diner that still proudly serves the early-century American classic “slider” burger. The diner is the descendant of the 1939 Worlds Fair “Diner of the Future” that was built to represent the future of fast food. The original White Manna was purchased by Louis Bridges and brought to Jersey City, where it remains today. Louis built four other White Mannas around northern New Jersey, but only the Hackensack and Jersey City locations survive. Inside and out, the tiny diner remains true to its original design. The structure is sheathed in stainless steel, has vertical white porcelain panels beneath the windows, and includes Paramount Diner Company’s signature use of glass block throughout.
The interior cannot be more than 130 square feet. Behind a small horseshoe counter surrounded by stools, a short-order cook takes one order after the next, never putting pen to paper. You sit patiently, taking in the thick oniony aroma, until the cook makes eye contact with you. When you place your order, the cook reaches into a pan below the counter, grabs golf ball–sized balls of meat, presses them onto the tiny griddle, and places a wad of thinly sliced onion on top. If you ask for a double, two of the small balls of beef get pressed together. The cook uses a right-to-left system on the griddle to keep track and miraculously keeps all of the orders straight. Similar to the original White Castle system, buns are placed atop the cooking
burgers to soften and soak up the onion essence.
The sliders are served on soft potato rolls on a paper plate with a pile of pickle chips. If you order cheese, expect not a picture-perfect burger, but a glorious pile of tangled beef, onions, and cheese that is barely contained by its bun. The burgers at White Manna may not look pretty, but they sure are delicious. You’ll need more than a few sliders to fill you up. Order doubles to accomplish a better beef-to-bun ratio. Esteemed food writer and blogger Jason Perlow prefers to make a meal out of four doubles.
Ronny and Ofer Cohen bought White Manna in 1986 as a business venture, but were also seduced by its charm. “You just fall in love with this place,” Ronny told me. They have changed very little about the White Manna, but admitted an attempt to add potato salad and coleslaw to the menu early on in their ownership. “People walk into White Manna to buy burgers.” Ronny feels the crush of commercial fast food all around him in Hackensack, New Jersey. “The only way I can survive is to do things the old-fashioned way.”
Before walking into White Manna, strip down to the least amount of clothing. Not because it’s hot in there, but because after you leave, your clothes will be infused with the unmistakable fragrance of grease and onions. There’ll be no hiding the fact that you just dined at the famous White Manna.
WHITE ROSE SYSTEM
1301 EAST ELIZABETH AVE | LINDEN, NJ 07036
908-486-9651 | MON–SAT 5 AM–3:30 PM
At one time in north Jersey the slider reigned supreme. As the homogenization of burger culture in America swept over the tri-state area, the tiny slider emporiums started to disappear. Many of these gleaming, stainless-steel-and-porcelain diners had the word “white” in their names no doubt as a nod to the most famous slider joint of them all—White Castle. Places like White Diamond, White Manna, and White Tower were all trying to share the limelight with the more successful Wichita chain. What’s incredible is that after all of these years, unlike White Castle, the places that survived have remained virtually unchanged and still serve the same classic slider that they always have. So if you really want to see what White Castle was like back in the day, you’ll need to drop into a place like White Rose System in Linden, New Jersey.