Stevenson’s Hamburgers in Euclid

In my ongo­ing quest [pre­vi­ous reviews: Heck­’s; Swen­son’s] to find the best burg­er in Cleve­land, I took a trip out to Euclid with Five Dol­lar Beer last night to check out Steven­son’s Ham­burg­ers. We learned about this place from the hon­or­able Food­Goat. This was a damn good ham­burg­er, def­i­nite­ly the win­ner from the three burg­er-cen­tric places I’ve been so far. Damned inex­pen­sive too, which makes this cheap bas­tard quite hap­py.

With light traf­fic I’d esti­mate that Steven­son’s is a twen­ty minute dri­ve from down­town Cleve­land. The restau­rant is shoe­box sized and dim, with an unas­sum­ing neon sign that sim­ply says “HAMBURGERS.” It is the kind of place where you come out with every­thing smelling like a greasy ham­burg­er, because you watch every ham­burg­er get made. In short, the burg­er joint feng shui is in full effect, and that was even before I looked at the menu. The Lit­tle Guy: Sin­gle Cheese­burg­er; The Big Guy: Dou­ble Cheese­burg­er; a steak burg­er and a turkey burg­er were their only burg­er choic­es. Excel­lent. I’d men­tioned to Patrick on the ride over that if I had a burg­er place it would have about 4 kinds of burg­ers on it and that would be it. Grant­ed, there was stuff on the oth­er page under the head­ing “Sand­wich­es” but I did­n’t go to Steven­son’s for a nam­by-pam­by BLT.

They had a great selec­tion of beer and soda pop from both sides of the aisle. I got a Big Guy, a dou­ble cheese­burg­er that comes with a sim­ple but tasty mayo sauce and shred­ded let­tuce. The Big Guy is $4.50. I dropped anoth­er 50 cents and got a slice of toma­to on it as well. I also got an order of unas­sum­ing onion rings for $1.75 and a Stew­art’s Orange & Cream Soda for 65¢. Steven­son’s does­n’t charge tax, so my whole stuffed to the gills meal round­ed out at $7.35. That’s say­ing some­thing, con­sid­er­ing I was the one stuffed to the gills.

This burg­er wants to col­lapse upon itself. I did a ser­vice to the NEO region by chow­ing down on it, because, if left alone, its grav­i­ta­tion­al field would have like­ly cre­at­ed a small black hole. This is one of those burg­ers where you won­der if there is going to be enough bun left to make a dig­ni­fied fin­ish to the thing, or whether you’re going to have to go all “hand­fuls-of-meat cave­man-style” to down it. I did end up pick­ing up some errant chunks of near­ly uniden­ti­fi­able goo on my plate. I did­n’t mind the onion rings, they could’ve had a bit more onion in them, but I thought they were tasty enough. This place brought back col­lege mem­o­ries of CJ’s [still the best burg­er I’ve ever had] and Steven­son’s could prob­a­bly give CJ’s a run for their mon­ey if they did­n’t use pre­made pat­ties. That’s the only real beef I have with the place.

Thus, Steven­son’s is a no-non­sense burg­er joint that serves a god­damn good burg­er at a god­damn good price. Any time I’ve got a han­ker­ing for a burg­er I’ll prob­a­bly head out that­away. Unless one of upcom­ing places ends up serv­ing up some­thing bet­ter.

Once FDB moves to NYC I’ll need anoth­er cohort to accom­pa­ny me on these burg­er quests. If you’re down for it, let me know.

Future stops on the quest:
Whitey’s Booze and Burg­ers
Spo­to’s Bar and Grill
Bear­den’s
Mex­imil­lian’s in Men­tor
Bass Lake Tav­ern
Fish­er’s Tav­ern
Eat At Joe’s
Bren­nan’s Colony
and any­thing I missed from here.