I’m not too good to eat at a greasy spoon diner. I’ve had some great meals at places with wobbly tables and sticky salt and pepper shakers. Last week I had a fantastic burger at a hole in the wall restaurant so weird that I doubt we’ll be going back to anytime soon.

Last weekend Susan and I were on the north side of town on our way to an antique mall when we realized it was close to lunch time. We were pretty close to a burger place we’d been to a few times several years ago so we decided to swing by there for lunch.

Although the sign outside was the same, the moment we walked through the front door it was obvious the restaurant had been sold and taken over by new owners. There was a lot to take in all at once. The floor, which is covered in linoleum tile, has been painted blue. The walls have been painted red and had nothing painted or hung on them. The lights on the ceiling are the same LED strips I have in my office that came from Amazon. The ceiling was covered with ceiling fans that didn’t match. It was 80F degrees inside the restaurant.

Ihe only employees were a husband and wife working side by side behind the counter (she takes the orders, he grills them). Mounted on the wall behind the counter is a large sign that says MENU… and nothing else. There’s a pop machine that doesn’t work except for the ice machine. When you order a drink you get a cup that you can use to get ice before grabbing a can of soda from a big cooler that also has ketchup bottles and a few other items inside.

Often times I feel scrunched when squeezing into a restaurant booth, but not these. In fact, the benches were so far away from our booth’s table that both of us could have had another adult sitting in our lap and still not touched the table. The sides of the booths were “open” as in they were missing wood — like, you could see the supporting 2x4s inside. It was as if they had all been connected end to end and then separated, forcefully. My favorite weird thing was that instead of napkins, every table had a box of Kleenex.

Our order took a while too arrive — not super long, but longer than I wanted to wait in a weird, hot restaurant. Each of us ordered a burger and then a single order of onion rings to share.

These were some of the best onion rings I’ve had in a long time. They must have come directly from the fryer to our table because they were also some of the hottest onion rings we’ve ever had. Combined with some cold ketchup straight from their drink cooler, they were great!

And finally, the burger. Sometimes a burger is so good that it momentarily makes you forget you’re sweating in a weird ass restaurant in an oddly-spaced, partially disassembled booth both a box of Kleenex on the table. This was one of those burgers. Lots of meat with lots of schmutz falling off the bun. Perfect.

There was a tip jar up next to the register and before we left I went up there and dropped five bucks in it. The woman who had taken our order had already disappeared back through the shower curtain blocking the opening to no doubt leads to an apartment. The man who had grilled our burgers was sitting on a stool staring into his cellphone. I doubt we’ll be returning to that place anytime soon (if ever) but it won’t be because of the burger.