Menches Bros' great burger recipe dates back to 1885.

I spent Saturday, July 25, 2009, in Akron, Ohio, showing around Gordon Sparks, a BBC journalist in town for a couple of weeks, a little of the “plus” in Cleveland Plus. We started off Menches Bros. The Akron tradition (with restaurants in Green and by the Akron Aeros‘ stadium) is a family-owned business and Judy Menches-Kusmits was gracious enough to meet us at the downtown location for lunch even though they weren’t opening until 4pm for pre-game diners. Judy explained that Frank and Charles Menches are credited with inventing the hamburger when they ran out of pork for sausage patties they were selling at the 1885 Erie County Fair and decided to spice up some beef (with coffee, brown sugar and other ingredients) and hawk them as “hamburgers,” so named for Hamburg, NY, where the fair was held.  And, legend has it that in 1904 at the St. Louis World’s Fair, the duo decided to use cone-shaped waffles holding their ice cream, thereby creating their “Premium” ice cream cones.

Owner Judy Menches-Kusmits

The Menches know others have tried to get credit for these culinary firsts, but they a more concerned with maintaining their legacy.  ”We are just a family here,” explains Judy Menches-Kusmits. “We don’t have the resources to go out there and make a big deal about this . . . we just want to run our restaurant to the best of our ability.” What can’t be disputed is that the enterprising Menches have been making a very original burger for a very long time (photos in the eateries show their fair and festival booth advertising the “hamberg” and the “Premium ice cream cone.”)

Judy said the family found the secret original recipe locked in a cabinet and scrawled onto a scrap of paper. They revived the family tradition–first with a traveling fair booth before opening the restaurants. While they don’t mess with the classic, they do introduce new tastes from time to time, most recently taking first place in the “best creative burger cook-off” at Akron’s National Hamburger Festival. The family also has soups, breads, sandwiches and other homemade fare on the menu including, to my delight, a black bean veggie burger. (Oddly enough, after all this waxing poetic about a burger joint I must admit that I myself have been a vegetarian since 1983.)

But rest assured, my two carnivore companions on the trip dove into the onion rings, fries and classic Menches’ burgers stopping only to comment that they could detect a hint of “brown sugar.” –Submitted by SF