Where do you go for lunch now?
There was a place in downtown Detroit in the shadows of its few high-rises on a small anonymous side street.
In those earlier days when we were workers, aspiring professionals, and not yet in the "business lunch" stage of our careers, we'd head out the door at noon with the hour in our minds and, when we'd hit the street and start walking, there was always our deliberation about where to go. We'd, of course, default to one or two consistently good favorites, most frequently making a quick several block walk to this place. It was always jam-packed. Men, mostly, sitting elbow to elbow at the long bar ordering burgers for lunch.
An old man worked the open griddle down at the far end, bent over, constantly moving. Time was the essence for all of us. Over a couple of hours of what was the staggered midday lunch period, he would slap prepared patties onto a very hot flat plate griddle, talking to them all the time, swearing at them for their laziness in getting done, flipping, turning, moving them from front to back as they cooked, scraping the residue off to the side, adding cheese, grabbing a toasted bun, putting it all together, and plating for the bartender or waitress to then grab them and slide them to our places along the bar. The burgers were really tasty, classically black and crispy on the outside edges and succulently moist on the inside. Not smashburgers, just perfect faultless half-pound pleasures.
Why is it so very hard, impossible, to find those burgers anywhere, anymore?
Was it the man?
Who was he, too old to have been working so hard? We all greatly appreciated his craftsmanship yet never knew who he was, never talked with him as in the usual banter with the people behind the bar. Was he under pressure from management or was he a prideful owner sustaining a reputation? He seemed to accept his sweat, working with an appreciation of the pressures of the rest of us workers even as we were of an apparently different caste. Was his day only that, a couple of hours at the grill? How did he wake in the morning and think of his day? Did he end his day with a sense of fulfillment, even after all of us, maybe hundreds daily, left without even a word of appreciation voiced to his back?
Looks amazing! Wish I could have been there!