Big Spring Cafe | |
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Big Spring Cafe in April 2011 | |
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Restaurant information | |
Established | 1922 |
Owner(s) | Pam Milam |
Food type | Diner |
Dress code | Casual |
Street address | 3507 Governors Drive SW |
City | Huntsville |
County | Madison |
State | Alabama |
Postal/ZIP Code | 35805-3723 |
Country | United States |
Coordinates | 34°43′14″N86°36′17″W / 34.720486°N 86.604806°W |
Seating capacity | 2 tables, 16 bar stools |
Reservations | No |
Big Spring Cafe is a diner in Huntsville, Alabama. [1] It opened in 1922, and is the oldest restaurant in the city. [2] [3] It is often noted as a landmark in the city and as one of Huntsville's "signature" restaurants. [4] [5] When the original location opened, it served only hamburgers consisting of ground beef, onions, mustard and salt on a roll. [3] [6]
The original Big Spring Cafe opened in 1922 at 119 Jefferson Street. [7] It was located in a railroad boxcar near the Big Spring Canal. [8] It then moved to 115 Gallatin Street (where the Von Braun Center parking garage now stands), and then to Governors Drive in 1970. [9] This location provided 16 bar stools at the counter and two long tables for customers. The family relocated the diner to a newly constructed building about one-half mile west, but still on Governors Drive in April, 2017.
Troy Baucom opened the original location in downtown Huntsville in Spring 1922. [3] The restaurant was sold to Hazel Beene in 1946 and, as business left the downtown core for the Memorial Parkway corridor, joined the exodus in 1970. Two years later, Beene turned the restaurant over to her sister and brother-in-law, Doris and Howard Cowley. [7] The Cowleys operated Big Spring Cafe until selling it to their daughter, Pam Milam, in 1992. [10] Citing the age and condition of the current building, Milam announced in March 2008 that she planned to relocate Big Spring Cafe just west on Governors Drive, in "a year or so", taking care to replicate the interior of the cafe in the new location. [10] The move finally happened in April, 2017.
When the original location opened in 1928, it served only hamburgers consisting of ground beef, salt, mustard, and onions on a roll. [3] The current location, tucked between a meat market and a bait shop, offers both breakfast and lunch six days a week and is closed on Sundays. [10] The menu now includes diner staples including hamburgers, hot dogs, and no-bean chili plus Southern specialties like Brunswick stew, slaw dogs, and fried bologna biscuits. [1] The diner has its own special language for ordering some items. For example, a "hamburger with cheese" is a ground beef patty with mustard and onions on a square bun while a "cheeseburger" is a ground beef patty plus lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise on a round bun. [10] A bowl with equal portions of chili and Brunswick stew is ordered as "half and half" while that mix with slightly more chili is a "60–40". [10]
A hamburger, or simply a burger, is a dish consisting of fillings—usually a patty of ground meat, typically beef—placed inside a sliced bun or bread roll. The patties are often served with cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, bacon or chilis with condiments such as ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, relish or a "special sauce", often a variation of Thousand Island dressing and are frequently placed on sesame seed buns. A hamburger patty topped with cheese is called a cheeseburger.
A cheeseburger is a hamburger with a slice of melted cheese on top of the meat patty, added near the end of the cooking time. Cheeseburgers can include variations in structure, ingredients and composition. As with other hamburgers, a cheeseburger may include various condiments and other toppings such as lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, bacon, avocado, mushrooms, mayonnaise, ketchup, and mustard.
Chili con carne or Carne con chile, also spelled chilli con carne or chile con carne and shortened to chili or chilli, is a spicy stew of Mexican origin containing chili peppers, meat, tomatoes, and often pinto beans or kidney beans. Other seasonings may include garlic, onions, and cumin.
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A chili dog is a hot dog served in a bun and topped with a meat sauce, such as chili con carne. Additional toppings may include cheese, onions, and mustard. The style has multiple regional variations in the United States, many calling for specific and unique sauce ingredients, types of hot dogs, or types of buns and referred to regionally under region-specific names.
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Different areas of the world have local variations on the hot dog, in the type of meat used, the condiments added, and its means of preparation.
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Zack's Hot Dogs is a local restaurant in Burlington, North Carolina. It was opened by Zack Touloupas in 1928 and was originally named Alamance Hot Wienie Lunch. The menu began as a blue plate special, but over the years has been changed to focus on hotdogs and hamburgers. The menu has also been expanded to breakfast, lunch and dinner. Zack's used to be open seven days a week, but is now closed on Sundays.
A hamburger is a specific type of burger. It is a sandwich that consists of a cooked ground beef meat patty, placed between halves of a sliced bun. Hamburgers are often served with various condiments, such as dill relish (condiment), mayonnaise, and other options including lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, and cheese.
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The Big N’ Tasty is a hamburger sold by the international fast food chain McDonald's. It is designed to compete with the Whopper sandwich. A similar variation called the Big Tasty, without the center "N'", which was first released in Saudi Arabia, is sold outside the United States in parts of Europe, South America, South Africa, The Middle East, and Taiwan.
Texan cuisine is the food associated with the Southern U.S. state of Texas, including its native Southwestern cuisine–influenced Tex-Mex foods. Texas is a large state, and its cuisine has been influenced by a wide range of cultures, including Tejano/Mexican, Native American, Creole/Cajun, African-American, German, Czech, Southern and other European American groups. The cuisine of neighboring states also influences Texan cuisine, such as New Mexican cuisine and Louisiana Creole cuisine. This can be seen in the widespread usage of New Mexico chiles, Cayenne peppers, and Tabasco sauce in Texan cooking.