Voters on the Yelp! review app recently named Carl’s Drive-In restaurant in Brentwood, Missouri, as serving the best cheeseburger in the state.
Carl’s, which has stood along the original Manchester Road alignment of Route 66 for more than 60 years, was the only such restaurant on that historic highway to be bestowed the honor this year.
To see whether an eatery in your state made the cut, go here for the whole list.
According to the Kansas City Star:
To determine the top cheeseburger in every state, Yelp considered U.S. businesses with lots of reviews mentioning the word “cheeseburger.” The site then used several factors, including “ratings of reviews mentioning ‘cheeseburger’” between Jan. 1 and July 15, to find each state’s best cheeseburger.
Over the years, Carl’s has garnered almost 300 reviews on Yelp!, with a huge number of them being the coveted five-star rating.
One of them was Josh M.:
There just aren’t restaurants like Carl’s anymore. Carls is a combination of excellent food, tradition and the experience. The ideal Carls experience walking in one side, see that the other side has fewer people and walking around the building to the other side. Then, your order will be taken while you stand and wait for space at the counter. Your food will be ready just after a seat opens up. You MUST order a cheeseburger and large root beer in a frosted mug. Nearly all the staff has been there for decades and it is like a small family.
The best food, the best experience, the best people.
Carl’s landed a new owner last year, but he pledged to keep its old-school methods and apparently has succeeded.
KSDK-TV in nearby St. Louis did a feature on the restaurant a few years ago:
Norma Maret Bolin’s well-researched “Route 66 St. Louis” book contains interesting history about Carl’s, including:
- The building was built in the 1920s as a gas station.
- It became the Foot Long Hot Dog Company in the mid-1930s, then the Good Food Drive Inn during the 1950s.
- It became Carl’s Drive-In in 1959.
- Carl’s uses the original recipe to make its draft root beer, which reputedly became the basis behind the nationally distributed IBC Root Beer.
(Image of a Carl’s Drive-In cheeseburger via its Facebook account)