Yesterday, my wife and I went out for lunch (we do that on weekends...almost always) at a place called Kelly's Eastside in downtown Plano. It's an interesting place, with some alfresco seating in front of the place (right, not for me in 100 degree temperatures). We had read a review of the place that made us want to give it a try. Everyone on the menu looked good, but we ordered hamburgers...it was just a hamburger sort of day. My wife got their Southwestern burger (with tomatoes, a chipotle salsa, and guacamole) and I got the jalapeño burger (tomatoes and jalapeños that appeared to have been freshly grilled).
Kelly's Eastside is a narrow place with brick walls that reminded my wife of some of the places we used to go when we lived in Chicago. Her comment about Chicago, coupled with the fact that both of us had burgers that were, in a word, fantastic, made me think about a place we used to go when we lived there. I remembered it as Blackie's, but a bit of searching on the Internet updated my memory...it is called Boston Blackie's. I learned that it has now become a local chain in the Chicagoland area, with five locations. I also learned that it opened in 1984, only a year before we moved to Chicago; we thought it had been around for years and years when we frequented the place during our stint in Chicago. My favorite thing was the olive burger, a wonderfully smoky flavored piece of meat cooked exactly to order, with a huge mound of chopped green olives. It came with a slice of tomato and a piece of pickle...and mayonnaise on the bun (I normally use mustard...but not on an olive burger!).
So...if you find yourself in Dallas (Plano) or Chicago, I highly recommend both places, along with the two places that got the highest ratings in the hamburger face-off conducted by D Magazine, (Wingfield's and Angry Dog), which we tried over the past few weeks. It seems we are in a hamburger phase.
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