Grandstand Burgers

Today was a beautiful day in Kansas City and neither Jan nor I were busy, so we decided to have a little lunch outing. I had read an article earlier in the week that talked about two Kansas City area restaurants having hamburgers that were listed in the top 100 hamburgers in the country. They were Town Topic and Grandstand Burgers. Grandstand Burgers had been recommended to me by a friend and when I also saw it was one of the two mentioned restaurants on the list, I knew we had to try it. 

Going to Grandstand is like taking a trip back in time. As you can see in the photo above, this is not a fancy place. It is very small, has no indoor dining, no drive up window and the building is original. There is room for one customer at a time to go in the door and order at the counter. The rest of the building is taken up by half a dozen people working at flattop griddles and deep fryers. Every burger is cooked to order and it is not a fast food restaurant. It took about 15-20 minutes to get our food. There are 8 or 10 picnic tables outside where you can eat if you don't want to sit in your car. 

In the article, the author recommended the Kelly Burger. I ordered it as a combo. The Kelly, it turns out, is a double cheeseburger with a thin slice of ham between the patties and bacon on top. The available toppings are lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, ketchup, mustard and mayo. I went with ketchup and pickle only as I wanted to really taste the burger. The combo comes with a drink, your choice of fries or tots and a couple of onion rings as well. What I didn't realize, was that each patty was somewhere between 6 and 8 ounces. When the burger came out I was astonished at the amount of meat. It was more than I could eat and it turns out that they have a Kelly single, which I will get next time. Jan was wiser (there's a shocker), and she went with a single burger with everything except onion and cheese. She got a side of onion rings to go with the burger. 

The burgers were delicious and we both thought they were the best we had had in the Kansas City area. The patties were thick but cooked nicely all the way through. They were juicy to the point of dripping and the flavor was terrific. I expect the fat content was quite high. The buns were toasted to be nice and crispy. The tots and onion rings were deep fried and crunchy. Everything came out piping hot. All in all it was great. Not health food but really tasty. 

If you live here or are visiting the Kansas City area I highly recommend you give Grandstand a try. Don't expect anything fancy but the food is excellent and very plentiful !!