One football season before COVID-19 took hold, six Burger King franchises near Lambeau Field introduced a limited-time special to their menus: the Green Bay Burger. It utilized the standard BK Whopper recipe, except that it included not one but eight slices of American cheese.
According to a reliable local source, many visitors from out of state saw the signs promoting the burger in the restaurant windows, gravitated to the drive-thrus, washed down each cheesy bite with a big gulp of soda and returned home believing they had experienced true Wisconsin burger culture. Meanwhile, the source added, the locals just rolled their eyes.
916 S. Hatch St.
Open daily 11 am-9 pm
wisconsinburger.com, 509-241-3083
On Packers Game Days — yes, they capitalize the first letter of each word — the roads in Wisconsin are eerily empty because everyone has a place to be. If not among the 81,441 fans in attendance at Lambeau, they're jammed into one of Wisconsin's 2,700-plus bars or 200-plus bowling alleys that have screens beaming the telecast.
And no matter where they are, chances are good they're chomping on a burger — appropriate since Wisconsin is one of the alleged birthplaces of the sandwich (along with Connecticut, New York and Hamburg, Germany).
Every Wisconsinite has their favorite "burger joint," and many — be they restaurants, bars or bowling alleys — have been in operation for decades, conventional wisdom being that a grill imparts its own unique flavors over time.
For the past decade in Spokane, that burger joint of choice for many has been Wisconsinburger, the recipient of 10 "Best Burgers" awards from Inlander readers. As with all things culinary, the idea of the "best" is highly subjective, but here's what can be said about Wisconsinburger: It's authentic.
Unlike at those aforementioned Burger King locations, virtually all of the cheese used at Wisconsinburger comes from... wait for it... Wisconsin, which has been proudly promoted as "America's Dairyland" since 1940. The menu also includes another Wisconsin favorite: frozen custard.
And in a nod to the state's deep bowling heritage, virtually all of Wisconsinburger's furniture is repurposed from a 1950s-era bowling alley, from its bar and table tops to its curved benches, yellow stacked lockers and "form-fitting" orange chairs. There's also a bowling ball rack behind the front bar and a "Tel-E-Score" projection ensemble that functions as a check-in desk. It came from a former Airway Heights center known at various times as Airway Bowl, Baghdad Bowl and Matt Surina's Bowlers World, that last incarnation operated by a three-time champion on the Professional Bowlers Association tour.
Wisconsinburger chef Tim Ahern doesn't claim to be much of a bowler, but there are some aspects of his background that may inform how he ended up being a star chef of Spokane's burger scene in a restaurant that uses retro bowling chic as its design theme and cheese in a vast majority of its menu items.
Take, for instance, his place of birth: Heidelberg, Germany, where monks practiced a version of the game around 300 BC as a way of cleansing themselves of sin. Ahern's parents were stationed there as members of the U.S. military, and Ahern says his father had a strong affection for two delicacies of the Rhine-Neckar region: chocolate and cheese.
"Growing up, there was always Muenster and Gouda in the house," he recalls.
Most of the growing up, however, took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which exposed Ahern to a vastly different spectrum of flavors, including those imparted by the ubiquitous hatch chiles.
"I started out doing the fast-food thing, but got into restaurants as soon as I could," he says. "At the first place, I was waiting tables, and then I'd cover the kitchen for two or three hours during the afternoon when it was slower and the cooks took their breaks. I cut my teeth running tables and plating food at the same time."
For much of his 20s, Ahern "bounced around from place to place, almost always starting in the front of the house and ending up in the kitchen," he says. "I tried culinary school at one point, but it wasn't my thing. I seemed to be learning more about flavor profiles and getting the [ingredient] ratios right just by doing it."
If he hadn't figured it out already, Ahern knew that overseeing a kitchen would be his profession once he spent time at Albuquerque's acclaimed Slate Street Café and its sister venue, Slate at the (Albuquerque) Museum.
"That was so much fun because it gave me an opportunity to experiment and even make some mistakes — as long as those mistakes stayed in the kitchen," he says with a smile.
At Wisconsinburger, Ahern has long been given free rein in concocting what's called the "Grind of the Week." Those weekly specials, he says, are "an outlet for me artistically. It's been 10 years of running something different almost every week. I wish I would have written them all down."
Among his past favorites are a patty topped with an apricot Stilton cheese, white balsamic reduction and bacon; a ham and brie burger with a blueberry-sage glaze; and one topped with carne adovada, a nod to his New Mexico days, with slow-cooked pork in a red chile sauce.
Expectations are high for Wisconsinburger's new-year menu additions, which Ahern says have been developed "to keep things fresh."
The popularity of the recently added roasted garlic bites ($9), fried in Miller High Life beer batter and topped with lemon horseradish aioli, influenced the restaurant's decision to add two more "Goodies" (Wisconsinburger-speak for appetizers) and two new burgers.
The bacon and Asiago fries ($9.50) are just as the name suggests — an order of fries topped with Asiago sauce and bacon. A chip nachos basket ($9.50) begins with a stack of house-made chips that are topped with melted cheddar cheese and pico de gallo, then finished with a drizzle of green onion sauce. That green onion drizzle also tops a new burger featuring a curry chickpea patty ($15), which is replacing the veggie bean patty.
"It's a blend of some lighter flavors, including cucumber, with just a hint of curry," Ahern says.
Wisconsinburger's first double burger ($22) includes raw cheese curds pressed into the patties, topped with cheddar and Swiss cheese, candied jalapeños, bacon, fried red onion and a South Carolina-style mustard and barbecue sauce.
As for Wisconsinburger's ongoing success, Ahern says he's perfectly fine with the restaurant getting top billing over the man in the kitchen.
"I'm proud of what we've accomplished, but I like my anonymity," he says. "I like that I'm not a celebrity chef; I can go out in public and not be recognized."
Being surrounded by retro bowling alley furniture apparently helps keep even the most honored of chefs grounded. ♦
Bob Johnson has written about bowling throughout his career in journalism, and experienced Wisconsin's burger culture numerous times on trips to visit aunts, uncles and cousins in his father's native Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
