Burgers and Nostalgia at Lankford Grocery

To see more photos from Lankford Grocery, check out our slideshow.

Troy Fields

The Grim Burger is topped with macaroni and cheese, bacon, jalapeños and a fried egg.

Location Info

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Lankford Grocery and Market

88 Dennis St.
Houston, TX 77006

Category: Restaurant > American

Region: Montrose

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Details

Hours: 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays
Chilaquiles: $6.75
Biscuits and gravy: $4.50
Tater tots: $2.50
Old Fashion burger: $4.50
Pinapple-wasabi burger: $5.75
Grim Burger: $8.50

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SLIDESHOW: Burgers With Nostalgia on the Side at Lankford Grocery
BLOG POST: Burgers and Memories at Lankford Grocery

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More About

• Aubrey Lankford
• Houston (Texas)
• Montrose
• North-American Food and Cooking
• Mexican Food and Cooking

For a 73-year-old restaurant, Lankford Grocery is a breath of fresh air. Straddling the quickly gentrifying neighborhoods of Montrose and the Fourth Ward, the tumbledown burger joint in circus hues of red and white has never suffered the crippling mediocrity of an old-timer that's given up on ingenuity. Instead, Lankford has remained curiously current throughout the years, while still dealing in both juicy burgers and nostalgia.

Lankford is frayed around the edges, inside and out, and better for it with every passing year. Its dining room is a carnival funhouse of clustered tables under gaudy tablecloths and grease-slicked floors that undulate like waves while you try to navigate the place without crashing into your neighbor's booth.

Outside, cherry red picnic tables sprawl across an equally uneven cement terrain that's been warped by years of tree roots and Houston humidity. But for generations of Houstonians, it's been a home away from home. And one of the most remarkable things about Lankford is the way it manages to be both modern and blissfully anachronistic at the same time. There are no flat-screen TVs in the dining room, and the waitresses wear T-shirts with their names stenciled on in silver puff paint. The prices barely reflect the fact that it's the 21st century. And although Lankford doesn't accept credit cards, it does accept cash — and checks.

The same Old Fashion hamburgers that made Lankford a household name for burger lovers across the city are on the menu today, as are other classics: the cheese-and-onion-topped beef enchilada plate that's served on Wednesdays only and has remained a weekly favorite since the 1980s, or the Saturday morning biscuits with a dark, creamy, cast-iron-skillet-tinged gravy that would make a Southern grandmother blush with envy.

Those Old Fashion burgers were the culmination of many a post-church Sunday journey into the tangled heart of the city when I was a kid, my parents driving through the maze-like streets lined with shotgun shacks until we reached Genessee and Dennis and those telltale red picnic tables. We didn't travel into "downtown" from the far western suburbs very often — and certainly not into Fourth Ward back when it was still considered "scary," especially after hearing my police officer father's stories of late-night drug busts and shootings — but when we did, it was for oxtails at This Is It or big, messy burgers at Lankford Grocery.

They're still as big and messy today. This is especially true of the more modern incarnations like the pineapple-wasabi burger that's topped with crunchy red onions and a spicy, horseradish-infused mayonnaise that's offset by the sweetness of a thick, dripping slice of pineapple. These creations are among the things that keep Lankford popular in a city where burgers are as plentiful as potholes. This year, that pineapple-wasabi burger made it onto our list of 100 Favorite Dishes in Houston. Last year, it was the macaroni-and-cheese-topped Grim Burger, which also comes with jalapeños, bacon and a fried egg for maximum beauty and artery-clogging potential.
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"About ten years ago when I first moved to Houston, we left Zula to go eat the best burger ever — so Neal Cox and Lance Fegen said," recalls Jared Hunter, who now runs the Zilla Street Eats food truck, which specializes in mad burgers of its own. "They were correct," he said of the Lankford Grocery burgers that longtime Houston chefs Cox and Fegen directed them to.

"In fact," Hunter says, "we made our Zilla Dirty Burger stealing the idea from the Grim Burger."

"I think I might have to go to lunch [there]," he finished. It's the same reaction that most longtime residents have when you ask them about Lankford Grocery, whether they grew up eating its burgers or came to know it as adults.

"I guess I've only been eating there for the last 11 to 12 years," said my friend Emily Schwenke Ybarra when I asked her for her favorite memories of the place. Only 11 or 12 years? "Katharine, come on," was her quick reply. "For a native Houstonian that's nothing."

For Paula Murphy — whose own longtime clients at her PR firm include such Montrose restaurants as Hugo's, Backstreet Cafe and Mockingbird Bistro — her fondest memory of Lankford also happened 11 years ago, when a fellow diner approached her table at breakfast to inquire about the coffee mug she was holding.

"[He] asked me if I was going to be done with my coffee mug soon," Murphy recalled, "as that was his favorite mug and he'd only drink from that one."

Breakfast at Lankford is a quieter affair than at lunch, when it's sometimes impossible to find a seat either inside or out. It's during these morning meals — especially during the week — that you get a sense of how vital Lankford has always been to its surrounding neighborhood. Gooey, cheese-drenched chilaquiles are served with tortillas and two fried eggs on top, spilling bright yellow yolks across the plate as you build a breakfast taco with the entire affair. Bacon is cooked to a perfect crisp, with just a hint of that burger flavor from the old griddle. And while the grits always need salt, the creamy texture of the buttery breakfast cereal is never wanting.