cheeseburgeraddict: Thurman Cafe

Welcome to the Ohio leg of my cheeseburger tour. I have to first apologize to all of the wonderful cheeseburgers in all the burger joints I was not able to try. When you only have 3 days and plan on 4 burgers in that time frame, you have to plan ahead. So with the Internet as my guide, I narrowed it down to 3 places to go while in Columbus, Dayton, and back in Columbus.

I flew into Columbus Friday night. I landed around 9pm, got the rental car, and headed to my first stop, The Thurman Cafe. As always, not being familiar with the area, I sailed right past it. But I quickly found parking and went inside. There is a cool locals vibe in this place. You enter into a front room where people are sitting and drinking like it was the living room at a house party. Complete with dim lighting from the neon beer signs the scene was only missing a bong and beanbag chairs. I went into the back bar area where there are like eight booths, some high tables and the bar. The walls were covered in one dollar bills with names on them.

No really, these things were everywhere.

Mo money! Mo money! Mo money!

We will review them next time I'm in Vegas.

So I asked the woman at the bar if it was cool to grab a back booth. No was my answer and I was told to sign some guest book in the front room. I signed in and went back to the bar for a beer while I waited. She asked if I was alone, and then invited me to sit at the bar. I sat down and got ready for my experience to begin. She handed me a menu. There was really no need. I had known all week what the first burger was going to be, the Thurman Burger. I ordered it and took some more photos of dollars and had a Great Lakes beer.

My Thurman arrived and immediately the bartender said, "let me get you some utensils".

Dude. I just stared at it for a moment.

Rotated it

And just tried to understand what to do. That's bun, American and mozzarella cheeses, ham, sauteed onion, mushrooms, 3/4 pound beef patty, tomato, pickle, lettuce, mayo, and bun.

I did try to pick it up, which was useless. So to the fork I went. I think it goes without saying that this was an amazing cheeseburger. The good people at Thurman's know what they are doing. This is a work of art. Happy are you if your job is to assemble these everyday. If you look at the patty closely, you can see little green bits of some seasoning. This patty was well seasoned. Almost a meatloaf quality to it. It was juicy, quite tasty, more than enough of all the toppings to go around. Everything I could want and much more. But then why did I feel something was wrong? Uh, yea...I was eating a cheeseburger with a fork. This was a brand new concept for me. I have had giant burgers that you have to cut in half, or do some deconstruction, or even smush. Heck eat it like a taco, but never a fork. This burger was transforming itself in my mind from being a great huge cheeseburger, into an open faced ground meat meal.

Before I continue with this one sided debate, I will address one of the other issues I had with the Thurman. Onions. This is a common issue I have with onions being too plentiful. Also they may not have been cooked enough.

Back to the fork thing. You will also notice that at this point the bottom bun was completely gone. All the mayo goodness had soaked in and helped the shear weight of the burger collapse the bottom bun, forcing you to continue to use the fork. So even if in some bizarre universe I may have been OK with the idea of starting a burger with a fork, under no circumstance was I cool with eating the entire meal that way. It just felt wrong. I think I should have been given an option. There are many buns that could stand up to the Thurman even with the mayo on the bottom bun.

So my conclusion is that this is still a destination burger. Go there try it. You may not have a problem with the fork thing. Better yet, try one not on the take out menu called the Thurman-ator. I believe it's a double of the one I had. But when you get it first thing you need to do is flip on on the top bun if you don't want to eat the whole thing with a fork.