The place to be

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This article was published 15/01/2017 (3423 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A few weeks after my brother-in-law moved into a condominium on Queen Street, near Polo Park, I told him I’d pop by with lunch as a housewarming gesture.

Before heading over, I asked if there were any spots in his new neck of the woods he was partial to. After a bit of hemming and hawing, he replied, “How about the Burger Palace? They’re always pretty good.”

Since 2004, one of my responsibilities at the Free Press has been to cover what an ex-editor of mine once referred to as the “burger beat,” a duty that, through the years, has afforded me the opportunity to interview most of Winnipeg’s burger elite. Despite having visited practically every classic burger joint in town, from the Red Top Drive Inn in St. Boniface to the White Top Drive-In in the North End, and from the Dairi-Wip on Marion Street to the Dairy Delight on St. Anne’s Road, I had never encountered an establishment called the Burger Palace.

“It’s a little hole in the wall on Portage (Avenue), right across the street from St. James Collegiate,” my brother-in-law explained, when I inquired further, asking him to pinpoint its location, precisely.

After picturing that stretch of road in my head, I smiled before correcting him, saying, “Uh, I think you mean the Burger Place, not the Burger Palace.”

“That’s not the first time I’ve heard a story like that, about somebody who, for whatever reason, stuck an extra A in our name and thought we were called the Burger Palace,” says Andy Kostis, owner of the Burger Place at 1909 Portage Ave., which celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2017.

“I don’t hear it too much anymore, but what I still get a lot of when I tell people I run the Burger Place is, ‘Oh, which one?’ I’m like, ‘No, not a burger place — the Burger Place.’”

The way Kostis understands it, John Siates opened the Burger Place in 1987. Nine years later, Siates sold the business to Gus Vailos, later of Gus & Tony’s at the Park, who turned around and sold it to Kostis’s father, Costa Kostis, in 1998.

Neither Kostis nor his dad, a former proprietor of three Mr. Sub franchises, was familiar with the Burger Place when it hit the market for the second time in two years.

“My first reaction was, it’s very small,” Kostis says matter-of-factly, referring to his premises’ seating capacity, which tops out at a cosy 12 — slightly less if everybody orders a chili burger and chocolate shake and has to loosen their belt at the same time.

“But I quickly realized that was a good thing since we wouldn’t have to spend much money hiring people to clean tables.”

Kostis, 35, was attending high school when his dad bought the Burger Place. Because he had more experience cooking on a grill than his father — at the time, the younger Kostis had a part-time job flipping burgers at a greasy spoon near his childhood home in the Maples — he was immediately put in charge of the night shift.

“After my dad retired last year, I switched to days, which was a bit of a shock to the system,” Kostis says, pausing to say, “You bet” to a customer who asked if he would be “at the bar” later that night to watch a televised UFC match.

“At night, it’s more laid-back, and you get to crack jokes with customers, whereas during the day, it’s mostly go, go, go. I’m still getting used to it, 12 months later.”

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Kostis isn’t great when it comes to names, but he rarely forgets a regular customer’s order, he says. That explains why, when he’s in line at Tim Hortons or taking in a Jets game at the MTS Centre and a person yells, “Hey, Andy!” his comeback is often along the lines of, “Hey, double cheeseburger, no mustard, no pickle,” or, “Hey hotdog, hold the onions.”

“Lots of times, I’ll see a guy pull up out front (of the restaurant), and before he’s even out of his car, I’ll have (his order) started,” says Kostis, who, bright and early every weekday morning, picks up his ground round from the same nearby Family Foods store he’s been shopping at for nearly 20 years.

“Sometimes they’ll throw me off and say, ‘Sorry, today I was feeling like a smokie,’ at which point I have to try and convince them to have that next time, ’cause their burger is already half-made.”

Kostis scratches his head and laughs when he recalls the most unique order he’s filled to date. A few years ago, a former Winnipegger who lives in California dropped by the Burger Place with a cooler under one arm. He’d been in the city for a wedding and was headed to the airport to catch a flight home, he announced, and wanted a double deluxe burger to go. But because he wanted to wait until he got back to home to enjoy his meal, he asked Kostis if he could do him a favour.

“He wanted me to package the entire thing separately in plastic wrap — the bun, the patties, the lettuce, tomato… everything — so it wouldn’t get all soggy,” Kostis says.

“Then he very carefully wrote down the order in which everything would go back on… first the pickles, then the cheese and so on and so forth… so that he could rebuild it later.”

Another time, an ex-Newfoundlander told Kostis he was in the mood for “Newfie poutine.” Kostis didn’t have a clue what that was, but after the fellow described it as french fries topped with gravy, cheese curds and a pair of fully cooked, chopped-up burger patties, Kostis was more than happy to comply. No sooner had Kostis served it up than four other people in line announced, “I’ll have what he’s having.”

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Last summer, Kostis spent two weeks in Toronto visiting his cousins. While he was there, he went on a “burger mission,” he says, which involved chowing down at a variety of Hogtown hotspots. When he returned to Winnipeg, he asked himself a question: should the Burger Place be trying to keep up with the times?

“That’s the struggle I often have in my head. Don’t get me wrong, we’re still as busy as ever, but when I see places like Nuburger and Market Burger and all these other trendy burger joints popping up, I sometimes wonder if that’s what people want,” Kostis says, seated beneath a tin sign that says “Exercise? I thought you said extra fries.” (About that, Kostis and his 10-person staff go through 90 kilograms of potatoes a day, and as many as 135 kg daily if it’s “a busy week.”)

“I mean, we’ve been doing the same old Greek-style burgers for 30 years, and maybe it’s time to add stuff like fried eggs or avocado or mushrooms (to our burgers). But at the same time, I don’t want to risk losing my old crowd to find a new one.”

Kostis says there is one upgrade to his menu he’s been considering, given his clientele is “about 95 per cent guys.”

“Sometimes I wish this place had a salad bar just so I could talk to some ladies once in a while.”

David Sanderson writes about Winnipeg-centric businesses and restaurants.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca