by chef junglebook
Back when I drove a car, essentially during the Carter Administration, one of my favorite on-the-go meals was at Steak 'n' Shake. A franchised restaurant in the Eastern half of the United States, Steak 'n' Shake was a venerable burger chain that had become a civic institution by the time I was in high school by cranking out fresh, tasty (if incredibly thin) burgers and thick yummy shakes in a brightly-lit, immaculate white tile dining room. Seating was arranged to highlight the main show, front and center: the steaming, crackling grill, groaning under a load of sizzlin' Steakburgers. Steak 'n' Shake's guiding philosophy, emblazoned on all their gear, put it plainly: "In Sight, It Must Be Right". Although they had a bustling curbside service, as well as a heavily promoted takeout service (Takhomasak - is that a faux-Cherokee term or something?), the real treat was to sit at one of the plush, black-nauga booths and be waited on by crisp youths in spankin' clean white-with-black-checked uniforms. While sipping a water or cola in a nice-sized tumbler with two bulgy rings at the bottom, cooled by microscopically-shaved ice, you could review the simple white plasticized menus, and wonder at the relentless, fateful progression: Steakburger, Steakburger with Cheese, Double Steakburger, Double Steakburger with Cheese, TripleSteakburger, Triple Steakburger with Cheese...Did they ever go to the Quad, maybe in the Go-Go 80s?? I don't know, I moved outta Indy in 1979.
My favorite dinner before a Chris Lee Dracula double feature at the South 31 drive-in (or later, underage disco at Valentino's) consisted of a Double Steakburger, fries, chocolate malt and a warm apple danish. Mmm, I can still recall that feeling of my tongue going into salt-shock just at the thought!
The Steakburger is a lean, finely ground, pure beef burger that is put through an amazing ordeal before it reaches your plate. Perhaps they appealed to me so much because they closely approximated the one dish my father prepared on his roughly semi-annual forays into meal preparation. The burger starts out as a tennis-ball sized pellet right out of the grinder, which is popped onto the screaming hot grill with little fanfare. Then, in the style of the Navy Chef, massive elbow grease and farmboy torque is applied in smashing the ground beef mercilessly into submission on the grill, flattening out the meat and searing the entire surface into a patina of crispy, crunchy, fried-beef candy. As your burger takes its place in the winding ranks of Steakburgers marching acroiss the grill, it sizzles away with little adornment, flipped once and smashed, smashed again. The simple, plain white-bread buns wind their way through a toasting machine that perfectly toasts up just the tips of the fresh bread. Topped with only a thin pickle slice, the Steakburger is placed onto a nice white china plate.
The impact of the burger is mostly in the cooked, seared surface, but when you chomp into it, you do see a little bit of well-done grey meat within the crunchy black envelope. That's why the typical order is at least a double - the simple single Steakburger is more like a salty after dinner mint than a meal. The burger can be topped with the finely-sliced bit of Bermuda onion or crisp lettuce that comes on the side, if you really need a vegetable.
The Steak 'n' Shake fries are wonder unto themselves. Fantastically thin, the fries arrive in a generous serving on their own wide plate. Invariably too hot to touch, they gleam with only the slightest surface oil, which cries out for a fresh shake of salt from the knobby 50's style shakers, which are always full - though you should make sure some joker hasn't unscrewed the lid. Steak 'n' Shake fries seem barely bigger than a human hair in memory, but are probably about a sixteenth of an inch on a side, and always look as if they were all cut from the longest direction of a huge potato.
To balance the aggressive crunchy savoriness of this combo comes the other half of the chain's name, the Shake. Now, as soon as I learned the difference, I always ordered malts instead of shakes, so I can only report on those. The chocolate malt, mixed up on your order out of real ice cream and chocolate syrup, is topped with a pyramid of whipped cream and a stemmed maraschino cherry. Deliciously, it comes in a tall fluted shake glass, with - oooh yum - the metal canister with that terrific half-a-serving left for after the fries are gone. The chocolate flavoring is strong, and the malted flavor hits something in the brain just right. Don't suck it down too fast and get a headache!
Now that you're in yummy shock, don't forget to go just over the top with a nice apple danish dessert. The probably-not-fresh turnover arrives with slits cut in the top, steaming, with a pat of butter freshly thrown onto the hot crust. A bit too gooey to be picked up, what with the melted butter and hot apple filling, the danish yields to the fork, and though not overly large, is tangy and satisfying.
That whole meal barely broke six dollars back in the day, and these days you get a nice big plastic cup to remember your visit with. Itís one of the few things I miss about the midwest!
