Steak 'N' Shake

[Jovan]

Anyone but me love this place? Yeah, it's not where you go to get a four star meal, but it's tasty and not like the McDonald's and Burger Kings out there. Their values are also pretty old fashioned in a good way -- been around since 1934.

Check out the simple and funny ads: www.steaknshake.com

 

[carter]

Anyone but me love this place? Yeah, it's not where you go to get a four star meal, but it's tasty and not like the McDonald's and Burger Kings out there. Their values are also pretty old fashioned in a good way -- been around since 1934.

Check out the simple and funny ads: www.steaknshake.com

Attended my 1st in Cincinnati years ago. Great fries and shakes.

Now there are two that I know of in the DFW area.

The Midwest version of IN & OUT [with seating].

 

[TraditionalFrog]

I like Steak 'n Shake. They are all over Indiana where I live. In fact there is one within walking distance of where I live.

I used to eat there about once a week but got burnt out. However, I may soon go there again!

Sadly though, the restaurant chain has hit a slump, but I don't suspect it will be going out of business.

Fact: The HQ for Steak 'n Shake is in Indianapolis.

 

[lauwalton]

I worked at Steak N Shake for about a year- used to love it...Johny Rockets (spelling?) is much better..and cuter

 

[LocktownDog]

Never heard of the place. There's a Johnny Rockets in one of the casinos in Reno. Pretty good place to eat, as long as there's no convention using the hotel there.

The place I miss though is Burgerville. Used to hit the one in Beaverton twice a week like clockwork. Mmmmm ... marionberry shakes and walla walla onion rings .... *drool*.

Richard

 

[lauwalton]

Never heard of the place. There's a Johnny Rockets in one of the casinos in Reno. Pretty good place to eat, as long as there's no convention using the hotel there.

The place I miss though is Burgerville. Used to hit the one in Beaverton twice a week like clockwork. Mmmmm ... marionberry shakes and walla walla onion rings .... *drool*.

Richard

Never heard of Burgerville. I haven't seen any steak n shakes or Johnny Rockets where I live now. fftopic: Anyone know other cute restaurants?

 

[Brian Sheridan]

They opened one here last year. I like their food pretty well and the service was great. The owner also stopping using trans fats.

MMMMM, now I'm getting hungry.

 

[Johnnysan]

Many of them in Central Illinois and one of my favorites haunts for a quick lunch!

 

[KittyT]

Steak and Shake is great! One of the things that makes their burgers so tasty is that they use ground steak meat, not regular ground beef. My mom ate Steak and Shake growing up in Missouri and we always hit the chain whenever visiting. Their quality does seem to have gone downhill a bit, but it's still a tasty burger.

 

[Twitch]

Ain't none in So. Cal. but I knew them in St. Louis. It was the place to cruise your car. They had curb sevice then- the 60s. On friday and saturday you'd just continiously circle the lot hanging out and then park and order very little cause you didn't have any money.

Oh no, we took care of the transportation at the beginning of the night when everybody would chip in for 14.9¢ gas. If you had $2-3 bucks for gas you could cruise 2 nights+!!!

 

[NoirDame]

You know, I am really disappointed in Steak N Shake because every time I have had it recently the grease is pooling down my arm.

I am also not happy with Johnny Rockets here anymore because they are now playing the BeeGees. I miss the 50s music.

I love the burgers at Five Guys but they aren't retro themed.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Yes..Plenty of them here in Indiana. Good hamburger(steakburger) need to be a thicker patty,however....good fries(skinnier even than McD's,tho)and the shakes are real milkshakes.
HD

 

[TraditionalFrog]

Johnny Rockets....

Nice 50's theme...

However, a little on the pricey side for hamburgers in my opinion. Personally I like Steak 'n Shake better. Also, I could do with out the singing, (at least at the local one its way to loud for my liking).

 

[MAGNAVERDE]

These days I live in Chicago, but I grew up in Central Illinois, in several small towns along the Steak & Shake trail that led from Danville to Galesburg, and it never occurred to me that I would someday end up living in a city without a single one. The difference between S&S and Johnnny Rockets isn't so much their food--I love Johnny Rockets' chili--as it is the fact that that one is a genuine survivor from the Golden Era and the other is just a cutesy pastiche cobbled together by a big marketing firm.

Not that Steak & Shake is immune to the heavy hand of marketers. Back in the 197Os, right about the time of Happy Days and the energy crisis that followed on the heels of OPEC's oil embargo, Steak & Shake traded in their streamlined deco font & their classic winged-disk logo for a generic serif face, they added totally unnecessary red accents to all their original black-&-white restaurants, and in one location after another, they began eliminating their trademark blinking chaser lights, which ran in an undulating pattern around the frieze of the restaurant and down the the curving, blade-like sign that crowned their flat roofs. Not that any of those aesthetic issues kept me away. I loved Steak & Shake. I still do.

That was the best part of going back to Danville to visit my grandmothers: the trifecta of 193Os eateries that somehow managed to survive (in near-original condition) until the 198Os, and that I insisted on hitting on each visit. That meant a Steakburger & a vanilla shake for lunch, sitting at the tiny counter in the 1939 Steak & Shake on Vermilion Street across from the church where I went to Sunday school as a kid, followed by grilled halibut, perfection salad & rice pudding for dinner downtown at the Deluxe Restaurant, still in its original mid-thirties location, and still--at that point, anyway--with its original black-&-green Vitrolite counter, and for my third dessert of the day, lemon custard at the Custard Cup up on the Dixie Highway, a curvaceous Streamline Moderne pavilion rendered in white stucco & glass block which gave it the air of a futuristic igloo plunked down a few yards from the blacktop of Hiway 1.

My grandmothers are gone now, but the Custard Cup & the Deluxe are not only still going strong, they're the oldest busineses in Danville. In fact, I stopped in Danville on my way back from an Illini game in Urbana a few months ago and when I went down to the Deluxe for a halibut sandwich, the cashier was the same friendly woman who waited on us 4O years ago. And although the high school girls behind the counter at Custard Cup are probably the grand-daughters of the girls who used to work there when i was a kid, their lemon custard is still the best I've ever had. Normally, I don't even eat ice cream, but I loaded up a styrofoam cooloer with hard-pack quarts of this stuff to get me through the winter.

Unfortunately, the Custard Cup & the Deluxe are four hours away and I don't have a car, but at least if I take the CTA, I can get up to Evanston, where they at least have a Steak & Shake, and nothing that can beat a Steakburger, the world's flattest, crispiest hamburger.

 

[Michaelson]

Steak and Shake is here in Tennessee as well, and the food is always good, though I'll admit, I never think of stopping most days I'm near one....[huh]

Regards! Michaelson

 

[surely]

Magnaverde, very nicely written. Drew me in. Spent a yr in Urban in the 50's.

 

[jonniangel]

One of the (very few) things I miss about Florida is Steak N Shake....love their Friscoburger. Hmmmm, maybe I should put that on the agenda for my next trip in a couple of weeks! :eusa_clap

 

[ShooShooBaby]

The place I miss though is Burgerville. Used to hit the one in Beaverton twice a week like clockwork. Mmmmm ... marionberry shakes and walla walla onion rings .... *drool*.

Richard

burgerville is my one fast food guilty pleasure (except when i'm visiting CA, then it's in-n-out)! i am now drooling thinking about their spicy black-bean burger and chocolate shakes.

i've never seen a steak n shake, but i think i'd be more into the second half than the first!

 

[Kim_B]

Better than Steak n Shake - An Indiana Treasure!

Even better than Steak & Shake if your ever in my neck of the woods (ok, the Goshen area) is Alley Oops Diner. Great atmosphere, reasonable prices, the waitresses wear poodle skirts, and you get ice cream with your meal!

I tried to find a website for it, but there isn't one. Shame, really.

South Side Soda Shop is pretty good, or so I've heard. It was actually featured on Food Network's Diners Drive-Ins and Dives not too long ago.

 

[Lotus Leroux]

I do enjoy Steak and Shake. I ate inside at the restaurant about a week ago and was surprised to see how large the menu is relative to the drive through menu. I had previously only been through the drive through so I assumed the drive through menu was all they had.