Singing the Deep Fried Beale Street Burger Blues

Dyer’s Burgers
205 Beale St.
Memphis, TN




“Memphis is not what it used to be.”
      -- Texas songwriter Owen Temple from his song “Memphis”


No, Memphis is not.

I suppose most folks think that’s a good thing, especially when you hear Will Shade, leader of the legendary Memphis Jug Band describe Memphis’ infamous Beale Street about a century ago:

"You could walk down the street in the days of 1900 and like that and you could find a man wit’ throat cut from ear to ear.

"Also you could find people lyin’ dead wit’ not their throat cut, money took and everything in their pockets, took out of their pockets and thrown outside the house.

"Sometimes you find them with no clothes on, throwed out of winders here on Beale Street. Sportin’ class o’ women runnin’ up and down the street all night long."

After reading that, I suppose I grudgingly agree it’s a good thing too.

I’m not all that keen on having my throat cut.

But there is something sad about such an iconic part of America existing now as nothing but a memory -- and a 21st Century Disneyesque mockery of the blues.

At least that is what Beale Street has become.

And if you don’t think that is an indictment of all of Memphis, consider the words of the great B.B. King, whose B.B. King’s Blues Club now stands as the flagship Disneyesque attraction on Beale Street:

"I don’t think of Memphis as Memphis. I thought of Beale Street as Memphis."

Before the days of urban renewal, Beale Street was the place black people from all over the mid-South and Mississippi Delta came to live, work, party and die.

All of it to the soundtrack of the blues -- the soulful, haunting sound that gave birth to almost every form of modern popular music from rock n’ roll to R&B to hip hop.

Beale Street was a bustling, bubbling gumbo of sweaty fun.

Beale Street entertainer Rufus Thomas once said, “If you were black for one Saturday night and on Beale Street, never would you want to be white again.”

But just about all of THAT Beale Street is long gone, plowed under by progress, so called.

The black juke joints were replaced with Coyote Ugly and the Hard Rock Café.

Drunken black revelers from the Delta replaced with drunken white tourists from Des Moines and Buffalo.

Authentic, gritty, gut bucket blues replaced with what I derisively call “tourist blues” -- countless repetitions of “Mustang Sally” and “She’s a Brick…

…House”.

Gag.

But I’m happy to say there is one piece of old Memphis that survives to this day.

The grease at Dyer’s Burgers.

Yes. Dyers’ has been deep frying burgers in a cauldron of hot grease that has not been changed in over a century.

You read that right.

Dyer’s deep fries its burgers.

And Dyer’s has never changed the grease. Not once in 101 years.

Oh sure, at 4am last call, one of Dyer’s employees will strain out all the burger and fry remainders and occasionally add some fresh oil to the mix, but change the grease?

No way. It’s never been done.

In fact, the Memphis police gave Dyer’s skillet of precious grease an armed police escort across town when Dyer’s relocated to 205 Beale Street years ago.

Awesome!

And you know what makes it even more awesome?

Sticking it to nanny state Communist dictators like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg telling me how many ounces of Coke I can buy.

I feel like I’m giving the fascists trying to run my life a giant middle finger when I sink my teeth into such an unhealthy grease-laden indulgence as a Dyer’s burger.

The beef patty and cheese are submerged in Dyer’s gurgling heirloom grease for a few moments and then placed on a soft squooshy bun.

The result is hot, gooey burger bliss.

Especially at midnight after an evening of too many renditions of “Mustang Sally” and Beale Street Big Ass Beers.

Admittedly, my Suit757 palate was a bit numbed by the time it got to be Dyer’s time.

But one thing I have no doubt about -- the decadence of a Dyer’s burger standing in the middle of Beale Street at midnight is one of life’s great sinful pleasures.

Granted, no one other than Michael Bloomberg would compare this sort of sinfulness to that displayed on Beale Street in the time of Will Shade and Rufus Thomas.

But at least I won’t get my throat cut for it.

Rating: Bought the Shirt!

Gettin’ Good and Greasy in West Palm Beach

Grease
213 Clematis St.
West Palm Beach, FL




I think I hit the Suits in Strange Places jackpot tonight.

I stumbled into a gourmet burger bar with dozens of flat screen TVs, the MLB package showing all the baseball games across the country, a beer selection of over 50 microbrews and a life-size longhorn perched over the marquee.

And the place is named “Grease.”

Welcome to heaven on Earth!

Greasy burgers, baseball and beer. What more could a traveling Suit ask for while cruising around downtown West Palm Beach with a growling stomach?

Palm Beach is home to Donald Trump, Jimmy Buffett and Rush Limbaugh. It’s one of the wealthiest municipalities on Planet Earth.

WEST Palm Beach is, well, NOT Palm Beach.

But it’s amazing what a few million dollars in taxpayer money can do.

Still an active taxpayer-financed construction site, several bars and restaurants have taken the free subsidy and opened shop in the newly gilded downtown.

Including the irresistibly named burger bar Grease.

I was most excited about Grease’s massive beer selection, conveniently mounted on the bar’s back wall for my perusing pleasure.

Almost by muscle memory, I asked my first-day-on-the-job bartender for my draft options.

But unlike most gastropubs, Grease’s healthy beer selection is mostly in the bottle.

After starting with a local IPA on draft, I moved on to a selection from the bottled beer list.

Not only had I never before tasted either beer, but I had never even HEARD OF either brewery.

Wow. That’s impressive for Suit757.

I get real excited when I discover new brews!

The local draft was from Due South Brewery in Boynton Beach – basically a home brew geek who decided to start selling his beer.

Now that’s some entrepreneurship I can appreciate!

Hoppy and crisp, it was a good but fairly standard IPA prototype.

It was when I ventured onto the bottle list that things started to get interesting.

My Thomas Creek “Up the Creek” Extreme IPA lived up to its name. And then some.

This microbrew from Greenville, South Carolina packed a mind-numbing punch.

At just under 13% alcohol, this is one of the most powerful beers I’ve ever tried that didn’t have a Dogfish Head label on the bottle.

The color was shocking. It poured into my chilled glass a deep amber.

Holy crap! What happened to the “Pale” in IPA?

The aroma of hops nearly knocked me off my bar stool before I even took my first sip.

But the extreme alcohol content yielded a surprisingly sweet taste. To reach the upper atmosphere summit of 13% alcohol, Thomas Creek had to add tons of malt, which generates massive sweet flavor.

The result was I sipped my Up the Creek Extreme IPA like an after-dinner liqueur.

In this case, it was more like an after-greasy-burger liqueur.

I was a bit disappointed with the burger menu.

For a place that bills itself as a gourmet burger joint, Grease doesn’t offer as many burger variations as you might expect.

Oh sure, you can get some weird burger with apples on top. But who the hell wants that?

So I settled for the BBQ Durango Burger, which turns out is just a standard cheeseburger with onions and BBQ sauce.

I expected a bit more creativity.

My biggest pet peeve with restaurant burgers is they always over-cook them. I like mine a nice pink medium.

Man was not meant to eat dried-up, over-charred ground beef. But that’s what every lawyer-phobic restaurant owner gives you, no matter how rare you order it.

Anticipating this issue, I ordered my Durango Burger medium-rare, in the hopes of getting some pink – and some grease – some where in the middle of my dead cow.

Low and behold, Grease gave it to me exactly how I ordered it.

In fact, I think I heard it moo at me after I bit into it.

The restaurant’s namesake came pouring out of the red red meat and pooled in an appetizing puddle on my plate.

The hearty, beefy flavor of high quality fatty ground beef really comes through when it isn’t over-cooked.

I enjoyed my medium-rare burger immensely – even if the e-coli does eventually kill me.

For eleven bucks, you’d think you get something with your burger.

Unfortunately, no.

So I got a half order of top-notch thin-cut onions rings on the side.

The rings would actually give the burger a nice salty crunch if Grease was creative enough to offer them as a topping.

With tax and tip, the total bill came to about $33 for two beers and a burger.

Ouch!

But, hey, with a name like Grease, it’s got to be good!

Rating: Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt.