Editor's note: Burgermeisters! Here's another excerpt from George Motz's book Hamburger America. George and his publisher were kind enough to allow us to run them here, along with George's beautiful photos. We'll be running one every other week. Eat up!

Crabill's is very, very small. What’s amazing is that the original Crabill's was much smaller. Eight stools sit bolted to the floor at a small counter and there is barely enough room to pass behind them. "The old place was five times smaller," grill cook Andy Hiltibran told me.

The first time I visited Crabill's I sat next to a white-bearded regular named Will Yoder who, for decades, plays the annual town Santa. Will had recently had his teeth removed and was on a soft food diet. Personally, I couldn’t think of a better spot to dine on tasty, soft food. The tiny burgers at Crabill’s, with their pillowy Wonder buns and healthy dose of burger grease, actually do melt in your mouth.

The burgers at Crabill’s are cooked in a wide, shallow griddle. The griddle is filled with about a half-inch of grease. "The griddle in the old place was much smaller," Andy told me, and showed me with his hands only a foot apart. "It was also much deeper.” Small balls of fresh ground beef are tossed into the grease then pressed once with specially made spatulas. The grill person uses two of these spatulas at a time to systematically press and flip the dozens of patties floating in the grease with a sort of Bennihanna-like speed and dexterity. As your burger nears doneness, it gets a splash of grease from a spatula and is transferred to a tiny waiting Wonder bun.

Chopped raw onion, spicy mustard, and relish are standard, but cheese and ketchup are also available. There is a sign on the wall menu that explains that ketchup was introduced in 1990. That’s right, it took ketchup sixty-three years to be accepted at Crabill’s.

Crabill’s Hamburgers

727 Miami Street, Urbana OH 43078 (map)
574-522-9101
Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m to 6:30 p.m.; Sat, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; closed Sunday

Hamburger America is available at Amazon and comes with a DVD of George's movie of the same title.