Faster than a speeding appetite. More portable than the pockets in your blue jeans. So affordable that even freelance writers can splurge on a top-of the-line rendition. It’s the mighty burger, which, day in and day out, fuels more Montanans than any other entree.
Behold the burger, the perfect marriage between Montana’s two premier ag products, beef and grain. It’s all about beefy goodness tucked into a bun that’s like a parent — firm and soft all at once. Slip in the sweetness, tang, and bite of condiments like mustard, ketchup and pickle, serve it up with an order of fries for salt, and you have sheer genius that can set every taste bud in your mouth aquiver with delight.
Lately we’ve burger boogied across the state, loosening our belts as we went, in full pursuit of the finest burgers we could lay hands on. We were after sublimely succulent sustenance on a bun, made with nothing less than Montana beef. And we found it. We found the burgers, then grilled the owners about their secrets of success. “Tell us about your buns,” we pressed. So they did. Then they told us about the meat.
It’s not easy to make a burger that stands out among the hundreds offered by eateries in our state, but here are five noteworthy ones.
Ruby’s 100% Montana Burgers
501 E. Main, Lewistown, 535-7450
The eight booths look 100 percent full as we pull up to Ruby’s burger joint at dusk. Three hefty pickups sit in a row before us but before we can decide if we’re going to use the drive-through, a burst of cowboy-hatted customers exit the eatery, file to their pickups and recede into the distance.
We hustle in with growling tummies, glad that the burger here is fast food. With the tantalizing aroma of beef permeating the small place, there’s no way we can wait for long.
When our burgers arrive in their cardboard trays, we briefly admire the red tomato slice then plow into a two-napkin burger nestled in a bun from a Great Falls bakery. Ruby’s burger is one moist, flavorful 4-ounce patty, and the pile of trimmings stops just short of overwhelming the meat. Better yet is the piquant Snappy Jack, a specialty burger with pepper jack cheese, bacon, guacamole, mayo, ketchup, tomato, chopped iceberg lettuce and onion. It takes a double patty version to keep up with the load of add-ons.
When Jim and Sue Zellick started Ruby’s they featured hamburgers because they’re 40 percent of all fast food sold. They chose to use Montana beef because “We’re sitting in the middle of fabulous cattle country,” said Jim. Finding someone to supply Montana-grown beef turned out to be tougher than the Zellicks expected (the vast majority of beef sold in the state comes from elsewhere), but now they’re settled with a supplier. The price tag to secure the meat is high but, then so is the quality of the meat.
As we sauntered away from Ruby’s, we checked out the big conestoga-shaped sign out front. The two attached wagon wheels were once on the coal wagon of Jim’s grandfather, a homesteader. Now that’s authenticity.
Nap’s Grill
220 N. Second St., Hamilton, 363-0136
The smoky flavor of a flame-broiled burger at Nap’s Grill is the closest we’ve ever been to grilled-in-the-backyard taste without getting smoke in our eyes. For customers who dawdle by the order counter, the open flames spurting around the burgers are an entertainment bonus.
Patrons at this hole-in-the-wall eatery with cafe-type decor are as friendly as the help. “What’d you order?” one fellow asked Liz as we waited for our burgers.
“The 6-ounce,” Liz told him.
“Wimp!” he joked.
“Nap’s Deal,” the most popular order on the menu, is not for the faint of appetite. It’s a burger with a 12-ounce patty, a regular order of fries, and a Coke for $7.45. No sense hoisting two burgers to your lips when one will do! Eighty percent of the burger customers go for the deal, manager Shaula Buhler told us.
The heaping side order of grilled onions dangled lavishly over the sides of the bun when we picked up our orders, but that didn’t stop us from loading on lettuce, tomato, pickle, and a touch of barbecue sauce. We’d noticed that all the regulars had a super-sized stack of napkins ready by the plates, so we followed suit and found that the seasoned burgers we put down our yearning hatches were as juicy as the napkins had implied. Yum! Fortunately neither of us dislocated a jaw in spite of the distance between the top and bottom buns.
McGarry’s Roadhouse
510 Wisconsin Avenue, Whitefish, 862-6223
We passed up everything from Vietnamese Spiders (tempura-style fritters) to Bay Scallop Carbonara to leave plenty of room for the James T. Burger at McGarry’s Roadhouse, a two-year-old restaurant in a stylish building that doesn’t skimp on the glass. An open beam ceiling and a candle on the table set the tone here.
Owners Steve and Sandy Nogal like to serve “familiar foods enhanced with international influences,” and the burgers here fit that mold. A sprinkling of herbs sat artfully atop our fries, and a side dish of pico de gallo stood ready to jazz up our burgers. A substantial mound of queso atop our plump, 8-ounce portion of beef completed the flavor medley.
Two bites into this burger we reached for our tan cloth napkins, recoiled in unison at the thought of wiping sloppy fingers on such finery, then wiped our fingers anyhow.
Burgers may be synonymous with fast food, but ones like this were made to be lingered over.
Burger Bob’s
39 W. Main Street, Bozeman, 585-0080
Nobody taps into the versatility of the hamburger like this downtown Bozeman establishment with the “Sorry we’re open” neon sign out front. We found more choices than we could shake a French fry at, from the Original Bob to the blistering Original Inferno Bob (jalapenos, Cajun seasoning, Tabasco sauce, and pepperjack cheese) to the half-pound Cardiac Arrest (four kinds of cheese, sautéed mushrooms, mushrooms and bacon). There’s a daily special, too.
We went for the Cowboy Bob’s, a one-third pound burger with cheddar cheese, crisp bacon and smoky barbecue sauce. Bob’s uses cattle ear tags to keep track of orders, so we picked up our yellow, numbered tag and took a seat.
Burger Bob’s makes the waiting easy. It’s a things-hanging-on-the-wall kind of place, with a big side order of humor. “Dishwater coffee” boasts one sign. “One-day service” proclaims another. A super hero with a “B” on his chest hangs from the ceiling. Below it feast patrons from college students to businessmen in suits to moms with a flock of preschoolers. Tables are close-packed.
Our eyes closed with bliss as we sank our teeth into our Cowboy Bob’s burgers. The extraordinarily fresh bun comes straight from the Wheat Montana bakery at Three Forks, arriving an hour before lunch. The bacon was superb, and the barbecue sauce added just the right boost of flavor. It’s just the nature of the beef if you ask manager Chuck Bassett, who pointed out that the meat is ground sirloin.
Some Burger Bob fans from beyond Montana’s borders stop every time their route runs through Bozeman, but what really tickles Bassett is when a customer he’s seen at lunch returns for another burger at dinner.
Bridge Creek
116 S. Broadway, Red Lodge, 446-9900, www.eatfooddrinkwine.com.
Seated in a well-appointed dining room in downtown Red Lodge, we placed our order with a server who didn’t seem to notice that our blue jeans and flannel were mildly out of synch here. How did we want our Backcountry Steak burger done? Would that be Swiss, cheddar, provolone, smoked Gouda, or blue cheese? And for our side dish, did we prefer fries, sweet potato fries, orange-poppy seed coleslaw or pasta salad? Anything from the wine cellar?
In time a robust, juicy 8-ounce burger on a sesame seed bun from a local bakery appeared before us. After arranging our white cloth napkins, loading the fixings from our plates to the burgers, and applying brown mustard, we eased our teeth in with appreciation. Bursting with flavor, the burger followed owner Peter Christ’s strategy to a tee: start with the finest ingredients and just let the food shine through.
“What makes your burger taste so meaty?” we asked him later by phone. He tabbed it to the better cuts of beef in the burger, the dry aging, the fact that the beef is never frozen, and cooking to a medium doneness.
With the following his burger has developed, Christ would never consider dropping the burger from the menu. Even a tourist who doesn’t eat a lot of beef in New York or Philadelphia is likely to opt for beef on a visit to cattle country, he observed.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to find a great burger at the town which boasts it has more restaurants per resident than any other in the state.
Craig and Liz Larcom are well-grounded writers and photographers from Great Falls.