Maple & Motor Burgers gets its 15 minutes on Diners, Drive-Ins, & Dives

by Teresa Gubbins

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Jack Perkins shows Guy Fieri how to make a Maple & Motor bacon cheeseburger burger.

Guy Fieri and Jack Perkins

DALLAS — Maple & Motor Burgers got its moment in the Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives spotlight on Monday night, emerging as the first second Dallas-area restaurant (after Pepe & Mito's) to get its filming aired on TV after the spate of filming around Dallas-Fort Worth that occurred last December.

Maple & Motor owner Jack Perkins showed DDD host Guy Fieri the inner workings of his best-seller, a bacon cheeseburger with sauteed jalapenos. Then Fort Worth chef Tim Love made a cameo, to engage in a gross eat-off with Fieri.

Maple & Motor came third in an episode whose theme seemed to be "sandwiches served at foodtrucks" -- a theme into which M&M didn't fit. The first two places, one in Austin and one in Minneapolis, were both sandwiches rather than burgers, which rightfully belong in a different category.

And while the other two restaurants were food-truck operations, Fieri described Maple & Motor as a "side of the road joint." Is that even accurate? Maple & Motor seems more of a "better-than-average burger joint that serves beer." Maybe Guy couldn't find three of those to string together in a segment, and that's why he tacked it onto this episode.

Guy's introduction was funny, since he made light of the fact that they'd changed the name of Motor Street. "Maple and ... Medical District Drive?" he asked, with mock confusion. Local color! Thanks, Guy.

Perkins then showed the inner workings of his burger: rolling it into a ball that weighs 7 to 8 ounces -- seems like a lot -- and letting that ball sit on the griddle before flattening it with a press.

Guy Fieri and Tim Love, cramming an 8-inch burger

They did show M&M's notorious line of people waiting to order, but they didn't interview more than a couple of those people. They kept returning to David Alan ANTHONY Temple, aka "Chef DAT", whose Sunday-best jacket and combed hair made him nearly unrecognizable.

They musn't have had enough to say about the burger, because all of a sudden Love was there and Guy narrated that he was "inspired to add one more Texas-sized creation to the menu for my bro, big-time Texas chef Tim Love who's in the house."

With Perkins looking on, Guy rolled two of the burger balls onto the griddle, then slopped on a silly goulash of bacon, onion, chili, brisket -- pretty much every ingredient Maple & Motor has on its line. When all of that food was put into a pile, it formed an 8-inch-high burger, which Fieri challenged Love to try and eat. Watching them smash it down with their hands and cram it into their mouths was just kindof gross.

Any restaurant that's been featured on DDD has testified to the stream of new business being on the show brings. It'll be interesting to see how much of a difference this makes in the fortunes of Maple & Motor, which is beloved for its unconventional spirit.