Best burger you've ever had.

Before this week, the best burger I had ever had was the Mexican burger at Rufi's Cocina, a dive in Waco, Texas. However, ate twice this week at Willy Burger in Beaumont.

On the first trip, I had the Hee Haw, a burger with pimento cheese, fried green tomato, bacon and red pepper jelly. It was really good. Lady at the counter said it was their best-selling burger.

On the second trip, I had the Huck Finn, a burger with green apple slices, bacon, feta, spinach, sriracha mayonnaise and blackberry reduction. Just awesome.

And the onion rings were done right. At most places, you take your first bite of ring, and all of the onion slides through the batter. These were cooked long enough that that didn't happen.

There's another Willy Burger in Katy, if you're in the Houston area.

Willy Burger

 

It sounds fantastic, but is it mainly the toppings, or is the burger itself special?

 

It was the combination of everything that made those burgers so good. Apples on a burger? Who woulda thunk? They were both really good.

 

When In-N-Out opened its first stores in Texas, it was nuts. They had to use a nearby parking lot as a staging area for the drive-through. Easily an hour, and I had waited a week for things to calm down before trying it.

That was six years ago and now there are about 30 of them in Texas, mostly in DFW but a few now popping up in Central Texas. Wait times are not out of the ordinary. I switch it up between animal and with onion; both are good.

 

Yeah, they're already in Austin. Supposed to be opening spots in San Antonio and Houston soon.

In-N-Out Burger coming to Houston

Their policy is not to operate restaurants more than 500 miles from a distribution center, but they have one in Dallas now.

 

500 miles from Dallas opens up some interesting possibilities. That gets you to Memphis, Jackson, Miss., the outskirts of New Orleans and Kansas City.

 

If you're ever in Gettysburg, there's a place called the "Blue & Gray Bar & Grille" that has burgers named after all the Civil War generals. I had the Harry T. Hays.

Battlefield Burgers | Blue & Gray Bar & Grill, Gettysburg PA

They also have a "Pickett's Charge Challenge," where if you can finish a quadruple burger on Texas toast and a large chili cheese fries, it's free ($25 if not).

 

Good Heavens.

 

I go through Gettysburg quite a bit, and I've stopped here a few times.

My favorite, though I can't remember the name of it, is the burger that has an entire Philly cheesesteak on top of it.

 

That'll blow the bottom out of the bowl.

 

Those kinds of things always seem stupid and pointless to me. You can't eat it as such. You're just going to break it down into two double cheeseburgers.

 

Ate at an In-n-Out in Central Texas...once. The burger was fine, nothing special at all. The fries were absolute crap. Even my kids didn't eat 'em. We threw away nearly three full orders.