For mother’s day this year I gave several of my favorite mothers (including my own) a copy of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. I loved this book about a family’s quest to eat local, healthy, non-factory-farmed foods. My mom took this book to heart, and has been trying a similar experiment at her house. She and my dad ate pretty well and mostly vegetarian (to my dad’s chagrin) anyway, and my dad’s standard joke when she serves up a heaping plate of quinoa is: “well, as long as you made me a cheeseburger.”
So, for father’s day this year, my sister Kate and I decided to take my dad on the Best Four Burger Tour. Basically, I googled and tried to find a consensus of the best burger joints in Milwaukee and came up with a list: AJ Bombers, Sobelman’s, Solly’s, and Stack’d. And we made a date to go out for burgers on four sort-of-consecutive Wednesday nights.
Our first burger was at AJ Bombers, where we realized we needed a rubric, which we discussed and drew up on a napkin as we ate. We decided to go with: Burger to bun ratio, Creativity, Quality of secret sauce, Messiness, and Taste. We also gave an overall grade, which we borrowed from http://www.madisonatoz.com/ (You should check out their website if you haven’t, it is awesome.) I set up a surveymonkey to track our grades, and we were good to go.
Each of the burger joints stood out in their own ways. [Spoiler alert: at Solly’s the secret sauce is butter.] The perfect burger is an elusive thing, and I wasn’t disappointed at any of the establishments. And I am not turning this into a food blog, so if you want to get the ratings you can message me.
But really, this was the best present I have ever given my dad. Well, I haven’t asked him, but it was my favorite present anyway. Because it was just awesome to hang out with him and my sister once a week and have a burger. As a matter of fact, none of us wanted the burger tour to end, so we’re expanding our list a bit. (Let me know if you have a recommendation.) Though that might just be to save my dad from having to consume excessive amounts of quinoa.
You need to send your dad to this website: http://cheeseandburger.com/
Be sure the sound is up. As you go through the cheeseburger choices, Patrick Warburton narrates. Yummy. Umm…not Patrick, the burgers…the burgers are yummy. Right!