Eating From the Trash Can: Steak N’ Shake Earns Roger Ebert’s Praise
Roger Ebert loved Steak N’ Shake. He wrote about it in the most glowing of terms. From that article:
If I were on Death Row, my last meal would be from Steak ‘n Shake. If I were to take President Obama and his family to dinner and the choice were up to me, it would be Steak ‘n Shake — and they would be delighted.
Now, I am not from Illinois. I have passed through it on the way to somewhere else, and somewhere in Joliet, there is a man who probably still wants to murder me for reasons I won’t go into here. (Bill Watterson once said that the Noodle Incident in Calvin and Hobbes is more potent when left to the reader’s imagination; same principle.)
I am, however, very familiar with another burger with origins in the land of Cubs baseball and Barack Obama’s old Senate seat, namely the (for now) headquarters of McDonald’s in Oak Brook. Indeed, the Steak N’ Shake outpost in Seattle (which just opened in May of 2016) sits only two blocks from a Mickey D’s.
I say this because when you bite into a Steak N’ Shake “Steakburger”, the flavor of their grill seasoning is tremendously familiar; this is what a McDonald’s burger for grown-ups tastes like. Same style. Same inspirations. Or, perhaps, since Steak N’ Shake was around 21 years before Ray Kroc showed up and opened his first McDonald’s in Des Plaines, it was the downstate chain that inspired the slick fast-food revolution in the Chicagoland area.
My point is that “this is X, but way better” was an overpowering feeling, and it’s the only way I can think to describe to you what a Steakburger tastes like. It is browned and hearty where McDonald’s offering is gray and lifeless. It tastes “meaty” in a way that those who remember my Wendy’s review can understand. It has earned every bit of Roger Ebert’s praise. In fact, I’m not so sure I wouldn’t give it the award for best burger in Seattle (gods know the local damn hipster bars can’t make a burger worth eating to save their lives, but stay tuned later this week for a joint I’ve got on my radar.)
Now, there’s just one downside. Everything I said about the burger being so good that, in essence, the McDonald’s reply tastes like a pallid dollar-store knockoff? The fries are that, in reverse.
McDonald’s fries are, even in the company’s own training videos, treated as the restaurant’s flagship; the powers that be in Oak Brook know that not only are the fries their highest-margin offering (consider the spread in cost between a potato or two and what they charge for a large), but they are what the stoned late-night drive thru crowd is really after and what people buying a burger are going to enjoy most in that Extra Value Meal.
Steak N’ Shake’s fries are…not that. I mean, they try to be that. They’re shoestring, as Illinois as Wayne and Garth, but they’re crunchy where you’d expect crispy (go ahead, bite into a handful of McDonald’s fries and tell me you’d know that texture anywhere if they’re done right), and the flavor is expectant of customer add-on rather than engineered to work on its own. The whole thing falls flat on its face and just feels like it’s there because as long as you’re getting the Coke (or a shake, but shakes being wildly inconsistent across fast food, I’ve made a conscious editorial decision not to review them except on their own merits), you might as well spend the extra what amounts to about 30 cents.
These are 30 cent fries is what I’m saying.
So where do you land a review of a place that serves the best burger in town but leaves you stuck horribly for an accoutrement? I mean, in downtown Seattle, it’s easy enough to find something else to munch on, but not so much in Middle of Nowhere, Illinois, right?
PROS: This burger is outstanding, the price is right for a combo meal ($7.99 pretax for a Double Steakburger with fries and Coke), and the lack of substitution has the same effect here it had at Dick’s in terms of alleviating “fear of missing out”.
CONS: The fries, man. If you’re going to go up against Mickey D’s, you gotta get the fries right, and these just serve to remind the eater how short of expectations they fall.
THE VERDICT: 3.5 out of 5 stars.
