Jerry Minnich assembles a crack Isthmus Hamburger Critical Evaluation Panel for "Meat City," a special report on the Madison tavern burger. Scoring size, quality and tavern ambiance on a 10-point scale, the survey includes the Big Ten Pub, where the $2.25 burger rates 7.0 ("The bun was fairly substantial, and it was buttered and toasted, which counts for a lot"); the Laurel Tavern's $2.25 burger, which scores 7.4 points ("good and juicy, and of nice size"); and the top-scoring Trophy Tap, with a $1.95 burger Minnich hails as "easily the best of the lot - a large patty, juices running freely, grilled to perfection...exuding the homemade quality you can somehow never duplicate at home." Alas, the Trophy closes in 1994, but is succeeded at its location by the Blue Moon Bar & Grill, which serves an eponymous Blue Moon Burger and a variation called the Pile Driver, a burger its inventor has described as "a monster." The Big Ten Pub and the Laurel Tavern continue to grill burgers that might lead Samuel L. Jackson's Pulp Fiction character, Jules, to exclaim, "Mmm-mmm. That is a tasty burger."
Meat City
From the Isthmus archives, March 3, 1989