Griff's Burgers, Texas: "Formica, loudspeakers, Styrofoam, enough saturated fat to stun a gazelle"

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Irving, TX: Old-fashioned Burgers Still Hit the Spot at Griff's

Posted by Ewan Macdonald, September 6, 2011 at 2:15 PM



http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2011/09/griffs-hamburgers-review-irving-dallas-forth-worth-tx.html#continued

The American landscape is littered with the skeletons and ghosts of dead burger chains. Odds are you've eaten in an old Burger Chef at least once in your life, even if you don't know it. And if you haven't had Mexican seafood food in what used to be a Hardee's, you haven't lived. Burger joints are born, burger joints die, and the cycle continues. But sometimes a chain doesn't quite disappear. Instead it lingers on, as if on life support, known only to a lucky few. Griff's Hamburgers is perhaps the perfect example.

Once an extremely popular chain in the southwest United States, Griff's is now down to around a dozen locations scattered around the area from Colorado to Louisiana, with the bulk of the stores centered around "corporate headquarters"—one imagines, the back room of a restaurant—in Dallas, Texas. With no website, much less an advertising budget, Griff's relies on a mixture of word-of-mouth and their somewhat creepy mascot "Griffy" to lure patrons into what are quite often crumbling A-frame restaurants. Once inside, though, one will discover burgers as they used to be: juicy, cheap, filling, rough, fast, basic—and delicious.

Understand this: Griff's isn't going for the ironically old-school, retro look. If something looks like it hasn't changed since the 1970s, that's almost certainly because it hasn't—and if it hasn't, that's almost certainly out of necessity (or neglect) rather than out of historical respect. At most Griff's locations you're experiencing fast food as it once was: Formica, tickets and loudspeakers, Styrofoam—and enough saturated fat to stun a gazelle.



Patties, crisped nicely on a flat-top, are styled as "Giant" and probably were when they were first hewn in the 1960s. These days they'd be considered positively petite at a quarter pound or less. (Tellingly, the default combo on the menu is for a double.) Small they might be, but these burgers are things of beauty with the right balance of crust and juiciness, even though they're cooked well-done.

[Chan790]

1. Is it just me...

or does Griffy look a bit too much like the decapitated head of Jack (in the Box) floating in a puddle of his own cholesterol-saturated (that's why it's shiny) blood.

[MiddleFingerMom]

2. Is it just me...

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... or does Griffy look pretty impressively aroused.
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,
Usually, it's just me... but this time, I just don't know.
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.
.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

3. This time it might not just be you

I didn't think about it until you pointed it out, but now that you did, I don't think it's just you.

:rofl:

[MiddleFingerMom]

4. OMG!!

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Boy... I think THAT'S a first!!!!
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.:woohoo:
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.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

5. "Savor the flavor, cause it sure as hell won't happen again"*

* Dan Aykroyd, "Tommy Boy"

:rofl:

[texanwitch]

6. I didn't notice that until I read your post.

I was looking at the weird brother of the Jack in the Box dude.

I don't remember the 70's being like that.

[krispos42]

7. Now I can't NOT see that!

:rofl: