Meers, Oklahoma: The Meers Store and Restaurant

In the Wichita Mountains of southwest Oklahoma, about 70 miles from Oklahoma City and a mile and a half from a wildlife refuge—a.k.a. the Middle of Nowhere—exists a ramshackle structure that looks like it could crumble at any minute. Pray it doesn't. Inside, Joe Maranto's staff serves up legends. His Meersburgers are half a pound of flattened beef, thin and lean and so large that they fill out seven-inch buns and occupy entire pie tins. If the beef seems impeccable, it ought to be. Maranto, the son of a butcher, raises his own Texas longhorn cattle near the restaurant; their all-grass diet makes them lower-fat, he claims, than chicken. And the cows fulfill their noble destiny well at the Meers Store—a former post office (among other things), and now, incidentally, home of a seismograph that measures earthquakes as far away as the Indian Ocean. Full of farmers and locals and looky-loos who made the pilgrimage, Meers is dripping with character. For most of us, it's a pain in the butt to get there, but if ever a burger were worth a road trip, this monster—served "cowboy-style" with mustard, pickles, tomatoes, lettuce and red onions—is it.

Photo: George Motz / Hamburger America