Cheeseburgers in Paradise

Late last Saturday I visited another casualty of the American burger wars: the sole surviving Denver outpost of the Griff's Burger Bar chain. Back in the day (and to be truthful, I don't know exactly when "the day" was, since this outfit's history is so spotty), Griff's could have given McDonald's a run for its money. The interstate chain owned by the Griffiths family was based in Texas, with locations stretching from Louisiana to Arizona and maybe as far north as Ohio. It had branding -- every Griff's outpost was done in the same steep-sided, A-frame style with the same bright-yellow sign out front that screamed HAMBURGERS in big, block capitals -- as well as drive-thrus. It had a mascot (some creepy little red-and-white-striped mutant-dwarf-clown thing named "Griffy," who exhorted you to stock up on nineteen-cent cheeseburgers), it had patio dining and, most important, it had location. No Griff's was more than spitting distance from a highway off-ramp, and many sprang up right alongside the beam of Route 66.

But Griff's was unable or unwilling to evolve, and that killed it -- or at least knocked the chain out of the big leagues and relegated it to a burger backwater, where it survives today only on nostalgia and the savage loyalty of its regulars. When McDonald's started experimenting with salads, Griff's stuck with burgers. When Burger King tried chicken sandwiches, Griff's stuck with burgers. When Taco Bells started popping up everywhere, Griff's kept making burgers. I can only imagine the senior Griffiths sitting in corporate headquarters somewhere in Texas, surrounded by posters of past advertising successes, chomping a cigar and croaking out dictums to his heirs. "This health-food thing is a fad, I tell you. Chicken sandwiches? Burritos? No way! No one is ever going to pay two dollars for a drive-thru salad! Burgers, fries and milkshakes built this company, and burgers, fries and milkshakes will see us through. Now, dance for me, Griffy! Dance like you did in the old days'

Pulling off Broadway into a parking lot dwarfed by the I-25 interchange, you see the sad remains of the car culture that kept places like Griff's alive. There's a primer-gray T-bird withering under the sulfur glow of the HAMBURGERS sign (the G is burned out), air intakes chopped into a hood the color of midnight and Bondo, a peeling Edelbrock sticker on the passenger window. A clapped-out, small-block motorcycle leans drunkenly by the door, as if the Fonz had rolled up here on a cross-country tour after Happy Days ended, gotten a job flipping burgers in the back and never left. Through the windows, you can see into the dining area -- the hard tables and curved plastic seats uncomfortable to any upright mammal, all empty and harshly lit by cold, businesslike flourescents. It's like the employees here are terrified of shadows, afraid to turn the lights down for fear they'll go dark altogether.

But going through the drive-thru brings back some of the old magic. Although the Griff's chain has made some feeble attempts at modernization -- in Albuquerque, the Griff's on Central serves green-chile burgers and Tater Tots stuffed with jalapeños and cheese; one location in Arizona offers a mesquite BBQ burger -- the board of fare sketched out on this menu is dominated by the classics. Griff's has always made good burgers: fresh, generous and assembled with care. A Giant single brings one small patty -- broiled, hot -- on a soft burger roll with onions, pickles and mustard. A Griff's Giant double (the chain's signature burger, mostly by default) is larger in radius and by gross volume, with two big patties, cheese, fresh lettuce, pickles, tomatoes and onion all wrapped in waxed paper that turns translucent with grease even before it's handed through the window.

Griff's makes salty french fries and battered onion rings, both kept down in the oil a little longer than usual so that they're always crisp, never pasty or flaccid. And Griff's serves milkshakes -- good milkshakes. Thick milkshakes, so thick the straw is a joke, way too rich to be any good for you, available only in the holy trinity of milkshake flavors: vanilla, chocolate and pink (strawberry, allegedly). There's no pumpkin, no mango-banana, no McCrappleBerry Swirl. A milkshake like this is the only culturally sanctioned beverage-slash-dessert that can be served with a proper burger and fries (like cold Coke in the can with pho, or beer with chicken wings). Those cupholders in your new Eddie Bauer-edition SUV weren't originally designed to hold glasses of chablis, you know. They were intended to hold milkshakes in sticky Styrofoam cups so that you could drive with one hand and heft that burger with the other. We fought wars over this, people. It's important that we remember our history.