Like any good child of the postmodern era, I am a sucker for Americana. Maybe it’s my disgust with the mediocrity of corporatized 21st century America, or maybe I’m just a bored, upper-middle class, white kid without a cultural identity, but either way I love the remnants of the time when things were Made in America, and the generations before us were drafted into horrible, bloody wars and dangerous, blue-collar jobs.
Nothing quite says “Americana,” though, like a good American dive bar and its synonymous food: the cheap hamburger. I am drawn to these places like a moth to a lamp, and so today I give you two of them: Ray’s Tavern in Reading, Mich., and the bar in the Hillsdale bowling alley.
If you lived in Reading in 1989 and viewed USA Today as a respectable source of restaurant evaluation, you lived in the town with the best burger in America. The source would be Ray’s Tavern, a small dive bar that smells of dust heated by old coolant pumps and lagered beer. Ray’s is Old. It hails from the ‘40s and much of the decorum seems original, including the size of the booths which have not caught up to the fact that the Midwest can now produce people over six feet tall on a regular basis.
The bar at Ray’s will fulfill your wildest hipster dreams as there are only two taps: Coors and Miller. Classic American beers can be purchased in the can (they will even pour it in a glass for you), and the liquor is cheap.
I won’t pretend for a moment that the burgers at Ray’s are the best in the nation or even the county, but they are decent and for about $4.50 you can get a fully loaded, quarter-pound cheeseburger. Make sure to specify how you want your burger made or it can easily end up well done.
The other food at Ray’s, though, is wonderful. Their waffle fries and onion rings are delicious, as is the cheese covered broccoli. The pie there is probably their most incredible feature. The pecan is particularly sublime, and when they have it on the menu, it should not be missed.
The staff at Ray’s is quite friendly, and they will talk with you quite a bit about the college. While it’s not anything particularly extraordinary, it offers some good respite from Hillsdale and is only about 10 minutes away.
My experiences up until this time with bowling alley food have not been positive ones. Usually they involve “nachos,” salmonella poisoning, and regret, and so since the age of whenever people stop having birthday parties at bowling alleys (it’s later than you think) I have avoided eating at them. Last week, though, a dear friend of mine heavily advocated that I go eat a hamburger at the bar in the bowling alley. I was very pleasantly surprised with what I found.
Let’s begin by saying that the bar is merely a bar. There are several domestics on tap and, for the price, they are reasonable. This bar doesn’t win any awards, but we won’t care about that right now because we didn’t come to drink or to bowl and drink. We came to eat.
And so we come to the hamburger. Let’s begin by saying that the hamburger is on a kaiser roll, which, if we’re being honest, makes all the difference in the world. It’s a third-pound of deliciousness, and it is substantial enough to fill a man. The meat was surprisingly high in quality and the flavors remarkable. I asked for medium rare. I got medium rare. I purchased a deluxe cheeseburger for $5.15, which has kept me quite sated the last 6 hours.
I have not eaten anything else at the bowling alley, and I won’t. The burger is easily the best in the area for the price, and there is probably no need to explore other menu options. The Americana aspect was a bit disappointing, though. The cook actually wore a white jacket and didn’t seem to have any tattoos, so I can only assume that he cared about his job. The bar was quite clean as well, and the lighting was good and not fluorescent.
I conclude by saying this: go to Ray’s for the atmosphere. The burger there is no longer king, but as a whole the experience is top notch and it will fulfill whatever dive-bar desires you may hold. Do go to the bowling alley for the burger. It is a truly sublime experience and, at least for now, it will hold the top spot in my heart.
