Bus Loop Burgers

Saori and I grabbed some burgers from Bus Loop Burgers tonight. I came across this place in an usual way. I was searching for St.Louis architecture when I came across a page with this image:

 Apparently, it was the main station of a bus loop waaay back sometime. The station now holds a burger dive which took the name of the station: Bus Loop Burgers. The structure is really amazing and nobody really uses it for anything except to wait in their cars after they order (it takes awhile to get your food). I really wonder what's in the roof- as it looks like there could have been offices there at one point. Hopefully no bodies.

The area of town its in is very run down. Old brick buildings probably dating from the early 20th century, many of them shuttered. The area looks really impoverished. Laundromats, a few convenience stores. Lots of empty lots. Looks like they recently put in some nice "period" street lighting along the street, Martin Luther King Dr St, which was probably some elected official or alderman trying to use a little money.

This is considered North St.Louis. It's the kind of place I'm hesitant to drive at night. I looked it up Google maps, and I was shocked- it's about 2.5 miles. If you take Skinker north of Delmar, you cross Olive and go under the metrolink bridge, and its like the average income of the area halved. It's quite incredible actually to drive it. It's a stark reminder of how St.Louis has such sharp transitions between neighborhoods- Less than two miles separate a major street in these first ring suburbs- On one, it's hard to find parking because the metered parking spots are full and its considered a pedestrian/urban highlight of St.Louis. The other I wouldn't feel comfortable parking any time of the day.

Sorry, got off on a tangent there. Was the burger place itself sketchy? Let's just say its the kind of place that makes beef seem like an illegal drug. Kind of fun though. You walk through the doors and in the narrow waiting space, there's two benches facing each other. You order through a tiny hole in a plastic screen that runs to the ceiling, and all the transactions occur in a rotating plastic pass-through.

The menu had about a hundred items, ranging from breakfast dishes (served all day! with Sunny Delight), to Gyros, to 99c Chinese egg rolls, to about thirty different burgers. The menus were all over multiple walls, some handwritten, most heavily annotated. Saori and I each got the 'Big Boy Burger' because we were feeling pretty hungry. We ordered and then had to wait about fifteen minutes for our food to come out since they really only seemed to have one person back there cooking. We took our burgers back to studio to eat. Smelled so good in the car, I started singing about them.

These burgers are indeed big boy burgers. We were probably looking at a 1/3 lb of meat, cooked. Delicious, freshly grilled, but still a metric ton of meat. Saori gave me a onion ring that was so big and thick, I had to take a break in finishing it. I never did kill that burger. I've seen bigger burgers, but I couldn't tell you when. Got it with Vess cola, which is only sold in the St.Louis area.

Oh, and I bought my tickets for Florence for spring break. Going with some classmates for our studio, although its very loosely structured, so I'm planning a side trip as well.