Wimpy’s Hamburgers

DC, says:

• Food:

  1/5

• Vibe:

  5/5

• Service:

  3/5

• Value:

  2/5

• Overall:

  1/5

Now we’re getting somewhere. Much like with the barbeque joint, I’ve driven by here a couple of times and thought now THAT’S a dive! Truly I've found a worthy dive on my expeditions.

This is another mid-day event as I pull up on the west side of Wimpy’s Famous Hamburgers. I mean both Wimpy and famous at the same time? Fantastic.

The menu is written in sharpie on a variety of pieces of cardboard taped to the inside of the window around the ordering station. The high value item is the whole catfish for eight dollars. They don’t specify how it is prepared, if at all, and I’m not prepared to find out.

To order, the guy inside actually has to take the screen off the window to talk and take your money. He’s very pleasant and doesn’t give me 5 ones on my change for a ten, so I’m ok with his attitude. I go for another cheeseburger and fries. Once again, there no exotic toppings here, although they do ask if I want mayo. I never really noticed that trend much before.

Well, Wimpy’s sits on fine lines between a restaurant, drive in, all out dive and maybe worse. There’s not really apparently any place to sit inside, or at least not one I was invited to. Instead there’s a plastic table and three chairs directly outside the ordering window.

Looking around is pretty depressing. On the left there are a bunch of really broken down houses behind an ‘A/C repair for $45’ shop and across the street there’s some boarded up unisex beauty salon beside a beat up vacant lot. However, the lot is not totally vacant as I notice there’s a green port-a-potty in the middle of it. Now, there’s no construction or anything nearby and while I’m just kind of looking around, some guy comes out of it! Then he wipes his hands on his shirt and starts kind of ambling down the sidewalk. I don’t know any port-a-potties that have sinks, so I was somewhat nervous that the portable toilet was actually the bathroom for the restaurant and that guy was the cook, but thankfully he didn’t take a position at the grill.

With this appreciation for my environment, I realized this was the kind of place where I could see the story “Project director goes missing at lunch” coming true. Then some devious manager of mine who’s probably helping herself to some of my discretionary resources will try and lay the blame on me for her abuse of funds, but I won’t be on the beach in Bermuda, I’ll be in a freezer in that grey house over there! Well, I decide I’m not going down without a fight, so I keep my eyes on the other customers.

The first guy looks like Ed Gein’s retarded second cousin. Although I’m sure he would murder for sustenance and entertainment, he looks doughy enough that speed could be my defense.

The next customers are a pair hauling a wheeled cart down the sidewalk. They yell at each other about wanting hamburgers and approach the window. The guy inside steps up to the window and turns irate about the nearly two dollar price of a burger ‘without no fries or nothin!’ The woman is mad at him and the guy in the window about the price and starts stomping her feet and kicking rocks on to the street. The TCM fellow looks kind of amused by this and I imagine at any time he might whip out a jug or a washboard to provide a soundtrack.

Then I realize it really isn’t all that different than being downtown except down on Main it would be some skinny bitch in new Swarovski A-pockets complaining about how the valet made her 2006 SLK smell like chiminichangas. Over here we have this woman dressed in a teddy bear print sweater covered in blue Kool Aid stains who’s unhappy about a two dollar burger. I guess it’s hard to keep Dallas women happy.

In any case, they move on, apparently to get chicken instead.

I manage to acquire my burger and fries without incident. They are wrapped in a brown bag which balances reasonably well in to one hand. Inside, they also wrapped the ketchup packets along with some salt and pepper within the napkins. Kind of nice thinking, there. Someone put some thought in to something…sometime.

The fries are the same cruddy skinny fries I’ve been getting everywhere, so after trying a confirmatory bite, I just toss the rest.

The burger bun doesn’t look nor smell too bad and it appears to have been very lightly toasted. Not bad, not bad. The cheese and veg are once again the same processed but not quite rotten style plant and animal products.

The burger meat itself is pretty much what I expected. I imagine it is probably horse toenails and chicken spinal cords mixed up with some recycled tires and sprinkled with cow sweat glands to call it beef. However, it’s not far off from the competition so far.

Overall, I’m giving this place a five on the vibe for sure. It’s beyond dive right in to dump. It’s also one of the few places where I can say that at least fleetingly I was pretty sure I was going to get carjacked. You just can’t manufacture that for franchising.

So now I am going to watch the 2006 Victoria’s Secret fashion show with the David Guetta backup to inspire me to eat tofu and crack open Traktor for the weekend. Until next time~