While in Minneapolis for a wedding last summer, I made my friends join me at Matt's Bar, home of the famed Jucy Lucy, an inside-out cheeseburger filled with molten, melty goodness. This is back when I was still seeking out local burgers, trying to decide whether or not a hamburger was a sandwich. (My verdict: no. The hamburger has transcended the definition of sandwich to become its own category.)
On a random residential street with little more than a Budweiser sign out front, Matt's Bar looks too brightly lit to be a dive bar and too divey to be a family-friendly diner. But inside, it's filled with toddlers refusing to keep their butts in booths and moms balancing babies in one hand and burgers in the other. Across from the bar, a kid eats his way through the middle of a grilled cheese wearing the crust as a beard.
At the time, I was just starting to eat beef again after a 5-year break, so I decide that starting with an entire Jucy Lucy would be a very bad idea. Instead, I order the grilled ham and cheese, we get an extra Lucy for the table to share. Served on a powder-puff potato roll, the patty has the consistency of meatloaf and sits on a bed of tiny-diced onions, both coated with the sort of browned grease that only 50 years of grill can create.
When it arrives, the waitress reminds us to let the Jucy Lucy sit for a moment, so as to not scald ourselves on the gooey filling.
We slice the sandwich in half, and the amber-colored nacho liquid gushes out of a wide crater with cheese still clinging to its insides. The creamy consistency suggests Velveeta or something similar, and the patty is browned just right so as to keep the cheese relatively contained. Together with the airy roll and the silky onions, the burger is a literal explosion of all the right textures. I have trouble not devouring the whole thing, but thankfully, Matt's Bar brings the same cheese-melting expertise to its ham sandwich. On greasy but sturdy dark wheat bread, the perfect ratio of salty ham to velvety cheese reminds me that sometimes, even the most unfancy American cheese can taste like utter luxury.
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