Burgers and Nostalgia at Lankford Grocery

The people eating breakfast there range from the bespectacled hipsters who now live in nearby fourplexes to old-timers who've taken their eggs and bacon there each morning for decades. (The yuppies who live in the new townhomes across the way tend to take their breakfasts on Saturdays, which is when Lankford is at its busiest.) And it's during breakfast when you really get a feel for the family that's held the place together for more than seven decades.

Lankford Grocery started out its life as just that: a grocery store, begun in 1938 by Nona and Aubrey Lankford. You can still get bacon and eggs there these days, it's just that now they're cooked for you first. And you can still grab beers — Lankford offers everything from Lone Star to Shiner Wild Hare — but you'll need to drink them there instead of taking them home. The burgers, on the other hand, weren't added to Lankford's repertoire until the 1970s. Before that, the little store specialized in deli sandwiches.
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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
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It's hard to believe that today, so popular are its huge, greasy burger masterpieces. The restaurant — now run by a new generation of Lankford family members under the loving guidance of matriarch Eydie Prior, whose parents first opened the store — addresses this in its own mission statement, summing it up in its first sentence: "We have nothing small, nothing healthy and nothing fast."

The Old Fashion burger is still all of these things. It's a towering cheeseburger on a soft sesame seed bun, with fixings that are the standards in any roadside burger joint: iceberg lettuce, occasionally mealy tomatoes, crunchy onions and dill pickles. Mayonnaise and mustard also come standard — not ketchup; this is Texas, after all. The cheese itself is nothing special — just a slice of plain American — and the burger can sometimes be overcooked. But there's still nothing quite like it, perhaps in part due to the city's shared nostalgia for the place.

Better are its more updated selections: the aforementioned Grim Burger, for example, or the new Frito Pie burger that sees its standard burger disappear under a flood of thick chili, cheese and corn chips. And while the french fries have never been anything special either, the tater tots and onion rings (while also frozen, like the fries) are still excellent examples of the genre. You may be tempted to order the Tex-Mex mix, but you shouldn't: It's just a collection of cast-off, fried-up end bits of jalapeños and onions that are unappealing on their own and would be better suited as a burger topping.

And if burgers aren't your bag (although that's hard to imagine in Houston), you'll be pleased to know that Lankford does something else even better than burgers — but only on Wednesdays. That's when the beef enchiladas are served at lunch, along with a bowl of stewed beans and a basket of freshly fried chips with bright green salsa. The exact same enchiladas have been served on this day of the week for almost as long as I've been alive, and I imagine they have tasted as excellent each Wednesday for the past 30 years.

Wrapping strings of cheddar cheese around the enchilada on your fork is an altogether brilliant way to pass the afternoon outside at a picnic table, remembering the Montrose and the Fourth Ward of days past and reconciling yourself to the fact that although Houston itself isn't terribly interested in preserving its history, at least Lankford Grocery is.

katharine.shilcutt@houstonpress.com