The Big Shef According to Peter

During the pandemic, the list of places to which I could safely travel shrank drastically, as it did for most responsible people. I largely limited my adventures to Southeastern Michigan, and my meals to drive thrus. I’d take at least one long drive just about every weekend, exploring roads and towns that I had never seen before despite them being so close to the area I’ve called home off and on for nearly a decade. I also quickly developed favorite local locations of fast food chains during my localized adventures. For instance, my favorite Dairy Queen is the one in Hamburg, Michigan because it’s one of the few Grill and Chill locations in the area, and driving there on surface streets is an adventure through the gradual transition of the urban sprawl of Metro Detroit to sparsely populated countryside. The same Eight Mile road made famous by Marshall Mathers is paved in mud and gravel and lined with dense trees in the last couple of miles before it reaches the outskirts of Hamburg. My favorite Jimmy John’s in Dundee was a little more straightforward. It’s location at the confluence of US 23 and M-50 made it convenient to routes I’d often find myself on during my aimless weekend drives, and unlike most Jimmy John’s locations in the area, it had a drive thru, meaning that I could satiate my occasional craving for a Vito, or Club Lulu without having to go inside and breathe the same air as other humans. But after a long year of exploring my backyard and drive thru meals, I was vaccinated, and suddenly, my world was again near the size it was before things got weird. I took full advantage and quickly took the multistate road trip that I’ve been writing about in dribs and drabs for the past few weeks, and thanks to that road trip, I can happily report that I have a new favorite Burger Chef.

I say that with acute awareness of how ludicrous it would have sounded a few short years ago. I adhered to the conventional wisdom that Burger Chef, once the second largest fast food chain in the US behind McDonald’s, was dead. The last restaurant to use the name ceased doing so in 1996 when its franchise agreement, the final Burger Chef franchise agreement, expired. The 2015 closure of Schroeder’s Drive-In, a Burger Chef in all but name in Danville, Illinois, thought by many to be the last Burger Chef was widely lamented, but a 1,000+ unit restaurant chain doesn’t go down that easily, even nearly 40 years after Burger Chef’s fate was ostensibly sealed with its acquisition by what was then Hardee’s parent company, there are still thinly disguised Burger Chefs hanging on. Research and reader tips have led me to two surviving bootleg Burger Chefs that are still in operation today, first Suzi’s Hamburgers in South Charleston, West Virginia, and later, The Chef in Cleveland, Tennessee, and I’m no less astounded to have tracked down a third surviving Burger Chef by a different moniker, Pete’s Burgers and More in Reidsville, North Carolina.

Pete's still retains the distinctive Burger Chef covered drive thru. 

Pete’s had been on my to-visit list since a planned trip to the Carolinas had to be called off in the spring of 2020 for obvious reasons. I was therefore eager to experience it for myself, perhaps a little too eager, as I arrived in Reidsville nearly an hour before Pete’s 10 AM open time. I occupied myself with a side quest to a nearby Food Lion where I picked up a couple of 12 packs of Cheerwine, a regionally-available cherry soda that’s abundant in North Carolina but elusive back home in Michigan. Even with an impromptu grocery run, I had to sit in Pete’s parking lot watching the clock in my car and the open sign on the door as a throng of uniformed employees walked across the lot in front of me and into the building to make preparations to open for the day. The building itself retained the formal facade that many Burger Chefs adopted in the 1970s while they were owned by General Foods, eschewing the funky birdhouse look of the 1950s and ‘60s, and adding a distinctive covered drive thru lane that makes Burger Chef buildings from this era easily identifiable. Just as my pondering of Burger Chef architecture and history was beginning to distract me from my eagerness to eat at Pete’s, an employee unlocked the front door, my signal that they were open for business.

Pete's has a decidedly modern order counter. 

Ordering at a bootleg Burger Chef is always an exercise in code breaking. Unable to use copyrighted names for Burger Chef menu items like the Big Shef, Super Shef, and Chicken Club, restaurant owners must give these sandwiches new, but still recognizable names, much the same way they changed the names of their restaurants, and often little else, when their final Burger Chef franchise agreements expired. In this case, the code was easy to decipher, at least in the case of the Big Shef and Super Shef, which at Pete’s were called the Big Burger and Super Burger. I ordered one of each and two apple pies in hopes they’d resemble the Burger Chef apple pies which apparently had cinnamon on top and frosting on the bottom. As I waited for my order, I examined my surroundings in search of any other vestigial signs of the Burger Chef brand.

A 1970s era Burger Chef Works Bar, still in service at Pete's

An up close view of the toppings; I might add onions and jalapeños to my next Big Shef

I didn’t have to look far, as at one corner of the dining room was an original Burger Chef self-serve works bar where picky eaters could dress their own sandwiches after ordering them plain. (Roy Rogers adopted a similar setup around the same time and still uses it today, though I’m unsure who did it first.) The addition of coleslaw, which is treated as a condiment as well as a side dish in the Carolinas was the only apparent deviation from General Foods era Burger Chef standards. Furthermore, I was able to date the building thanks to a couple of oddly slanted pillars just in front of the order counter that described the outline of the distinctive pentagonal window on the building’s original facade before it was expanded forward sometime in the 1970s to expand the dining room. This meant that the building was built to be a Burger Chef. I also noticed a large, prominently displayed sign advertising a birthday club for kids. This may be a tenuous connection, but it reminded me of the innovation of the Burger Chef brand, as Burger Chef was the first fast food chain to offer a kids’ meal, and even once (unsuccessfully) sued McDonald’s for ripping off the innovation. Burger Chef also pioneered the combo meal with their “Triple Treat,” and while they didn’t invent the double deck hamburger, they at least had the idea to rip off Big Boy with their own Big Shef before McDonald’s did the same and introduced the Big Mac.

This...

...and this...

...would have once had windows between them and looked something like this former Burger Chef in Northern Indiana.

I was again snapped out of my Burger Chef-history induced trance when my order number was called, and I returned to my table with my newly acquired historically significant fast food. I’ve now been to enough Burger Chefs that I can comment on the various common and diverging attributes of each locations’ modern interpretation of the Big Shef. Even when Burger Chef was a going concern, their offerings were not terribly consistent. Depending on when and where you walked into a Burger Chef and ordered a Big Shef, you’d receive a two-patty burger with a single slice of cheese on a three piece bun dressed with shredded lettuce and a Miracle Whip-based tartar sauce, but the bun may or may not have had sesame seeds on it, and the patties may have been flame broiled or simply cooked on a electric flat top griddle. Unsurprisingly, the modern Burger Chef holdouts that have been operating independently since the early 1980s, are no more consistent than their forebears. For instance, Suzi’s version of the Big Shef is cooked on a flattop and has a seeded bun, while at The Chef, the Big Shef is flame broiled and on a seedless bun. Both buns are split into the distinctive three slices known as the crown (top) club (center) and heel (bottom). Pete’s version the Big Shef offers a third, heretofore unseen iteration of a modern Big Shef. Its bun is seeded but lacks the club center layer. Its patties are flame broiled but have an extra slice of American cheese, but the special sauce retains the tangy zip of Miracle Whip that makes it a recognizable Big Shef.

That's a good Shef!

At this point, I’ve thrown around the term “flame broiled” enough that you’re probably wondering if Burger Chef was an imitator of Burger King or vice versa. There was a stronger connection than simple imitation. Burger Chef’s parent company was a manufacturer of restaurant supplies before they launched the Burger Chef restaurant brand in the mid 1950s. They produced a device known as the Insta Broiler that they both supplied to Burger King and used in Burger Chef locations in a time when the Miami-based Insta Burger King as they were then known and the Indianapolis-based Burger Chef were fledgling chains and not direct competitors in the same geographical territory.

I'd join the Pete's Birthday Club in second if I were 25 years younger. 

When discussing Burger Chef with my fellow millennials who have not experienced it firsthand, I often describe it as a better version of Burger King, and that description rang true when I tasted Pete’s version of the Super Shef, a quarter pound flame broiled burger dressed with lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle, ketchup, and mustard. It tasted like a Whopper as Super Shefs tend to do, but this one in particular tasted like a Whopper prepared at an especially well-run Burger King. I was born too late to experience Burger Chef in their heyday, but in my idealized version of the past, I like to think that Super Shefs were always as well executed as the one I had at Pete’s Burgers and More.

Super Shef: like a Whopper, but good

The fried apple pies sadly lacked the frosting on the bottom, but I suspect that The Chef in Tennessee may offer a pie that’s closer to the original Burger Chef formulation. I’ve long had plans to make a return trip there to investigate further. Still there was one menu item at Pete’s that I hadn’t ordered that intrigued me. After finishing my initial order, I returned to the order counter and asked what was on a “Chicken Sandwich Deluxe.” the guy working the counter informed me that it came with lettuce, tomato, mayo, and most importantly, bacon. It was a renamed Burger Chef chicken club. I ordered one to go, and unable to contain my excitement of finding another Burger Chef menu item, I outed myself as a weirdo and told a few semi-interested folks working the counter about my odd hobby of visiting surviving locations of mostly defunct restaurant chains, this very blog that describes my adventures, and that I had driven from Michigan to eat there. I rewarded their mild interest with Broken Chains stickers (Available for sale here!) and profuse thanks as I took my chicken club to the parking lot for examination and consumption, washing it down with a warm can of Cheerwine from the back of my car.

My Chicken Club came in what appeared to be a wrapper from Doc Hopper's. 

I felt an exuberant fulfillment. I had finally made it to the bootleg Burger Chef of Reidsville, North Carolina, and it seemed to offer a good many of Burger Chef’s greatest hits, combining the flame broiling of the ‘50s and ‘60s with the works bar of the 1970s as well as the semi-obscure Chicken Club. There’s also a fish sandwich on the menu, that I suspect bears a meaningful resemblance to Burger Chef’s Fishermans’ Fillet, which I’ll have to try and order on a return trip, which I’m currently preparing to make.

This Burger Chef logo may look vaguely familiar to Broken Chains readers. 

I encourage anyone reading this to visit any of the three holdout Burger Chefs I’ve mentioned here, but if you can only go to one, I’d recommend Pete’s. They’ve seemingly distilled everything that was good about Burger Chef into a package that feels modern, yet distinctive. I’ve previously posited that The Chef offers a glimpse into what Burger Chef was like in the ‘60s and Suzi’s feels more like Burger Chef in the ‘70s. But perhaps most intriguingly, Pete’s Burgers and More feels like alternative history. With its collection of positive attributes from varying points in the brand’s history it has the feel of what Burger Chef could have been, and maybe what Burger Chef would have been like if the brand had survived mismanagement in the ‘70s and the sale to Hardee’s in the ‘80s to survive today. 

If you’re a Burger Chef fan and/or a fast food history geek like I am, be sure to check out my new pal Darren’s Burger Chef Podcast in which he delves into the history of the Burger Chef brand and has intriguing interviews with people connected to the Burger Chef brand. 

Broken Chains on Facebook

Broken Chains Store

The (Nonspecific) Chef

In a couple of weeks, I'll have been travelling in pursuit of broken chain experiences for a full year. In that year, I've made some unexpected discoveries that I found truly surprising. The outlets of otherwise extinct, or at least rapidly disappearing chains I thought I'd never have the opportunity to visit make me constantly recall the title of my very first blog post. With every holdout business I stumble upon with help from my loyal readers and Google, I repeat it like a mantra.

You'd be surprised at what still exists. 

I've consistently been surprised and impressed with the places that are still open for business as usual, decades after the majority of their sister locations have closed up shop. Just when I think I've discovered everything within a reasonable driving distance, I turn over more rocks and find more places that call to me with the siren song of obsolescence.

Once a Burger Chef, always a Burger Chef

Over the summer, I visited a place called Suzi's Hamburgers located in South Charleston, West Virginia, and found it to be a relatively faithful recreation of a mid 1970s Burger Chef including operating out of an era-appropriate Burger Chef building. I had previously assumed Burger Chef to be completely extinct. In my excitement, I composed a blog post that, in retrospect, I realize discusses the history of the chain a bit too much, and my experience at that specific location not quite enough. A few months later, to my ever-increasing surprise, I would be afforded a second chance to write about Burger Chef. 

This is The Chef. In addition to reasonably-priced chicken biscuits, he makes burgers. 

While I was in the Volunteer State visiting Central Park locations, I found myself in Cleveland, Tennessee, a town whose Central Park is situated just around the corner from a restaurant called The Chef. I had known about The Chef for years thanks to the building's familiar pentagonal front facade, and cryptic posts about it on old Burger Chef fan sites. While the building is a 1966 vintage Burger Chef structure, and the name of the restaurant's name evokes the building's original purpose, I couldn't find any evidence on any website of it having anything resembling Burger Chef food. Through the lens of Yelp or Google, it looks like a generally well-regarded breakfast and lunch joint operating out of an old Burger Chef building. I figured I'd stop by for an early lunch on my way out of town just to check the building out. I didn't hold out much hope for the menu to retain any Burger Chef items. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was wrong, and that much of the lunch menu was true to not only Burger Chef, but the era of Burger Chef in which the building was constructed. 

It's at this point that should probably provide you with a little history. I'll try my best to keep it brief. Burger Chef was founded in the early 1950s as a subsidiary of a restaurant equipment company based in Indianapolis. The chain grew quickly by franchising during the postwar fast food boom, eventually becoming the #2 fast food chain behind McDonalds. Cashflow issues led to Burger Chef being acquired by General Foods in 1968. Lacking experience in the restaurant business, General Foods implemented sweeping changes across the chain with mixed results. (They also owned, and similarly mismanaged Rax and Ponderosa around the same time.) Building designs were updated. Marketing strategies and logos changed frequently. In the 1970's a Roy Rogers style topping bar was added, and flame broilers were discarded in favor of electric griddles. General Foods' mismanagement of Burger Chef led to Hardee's acquiring the brand in 1982, and quickly converting corporate-owned Burger Chef locations to Hardee's locations. The few remaining franchised Burger Chefs closed up shop over the next 14 years as franchise agreements were allowed to expire. The last restaurant to use the Burger Chef name closed in 1996. Fans of the chain regarded Schroeder's Drive-In in Danville, Illinois, a Burger Chef that changed its name, but not its operations when its franchise agreement expired, as the last true Burger Chef. Sadly Schroeder's closed in 2015.

In present-day West Virginia, Suzi's is probably best known for it's various breakfast biscuit sandwiches that rival Tudor's Biscuit World, West Virginia's homegrown chain, known for all things biscuit-related, but their lunch menu is the closest thing to the 1970s iteration of the Burger Chef menu that you'll be likely to find anywhere. Hamburgers are cooked on an electric griddle, and are prepared and topped as they would have been in the Burger Chef days. Close analogs of later menu additions like the Chicken Club sandwich and Fisherman's Fillet are available. The topping bar is present in the lobby, and appears to be an original Burger Chef unit. In fact most everything about the building is '70s era Burger Chef, including not only the structure itself, but the indoor and drive thru menu boards. In my mind it's less a fast food joint, and more a fast food museum, a glimpse into the past to an era when Burger Chef was still a major force in the fast food industry, but was clearly in decline, and trying desperately to reinvent the concept to stay relevant in an industry where its market share was shrinking. 

Modern order counter under a distinctively Burger Chef vaulted ceiling

If Suzi's is the best surviving example of a 1970s era Burger Chef, then The Chef is easily the best surviving example of a 1960s era Burger Chef. It's building has had some updates over the years, but all the trappings of a second-generation Burger Chef building, known internally as a "Cosmopolitan II" design, which retains the basic shape of the earlier Burger Chef building design, but adds an L-shaped indoor dining room flanking the kitchen. I stopped by during the transition from breakfast to lunch on a weekday. The original Burger Chef menu boards are long gone here, and have been replaced with a couple of flatscreen monitors. I ordered a drink and sat in the lobby, staring intently at the menu screens until they changed over from breakfast to lunch. After taking a minute to parse the names of the burgers in an effort to determine what Burger Chef items they might bear similarity to, I returned to the order counter and requested what the menu called a Big Deluxe and a Super Deluxe, suspecting the words "Big" and "Super" might indicate they are copycats of the Big Shef and Super Shef, which were fixtures of the Burger Chef menu.

Modern-day Big Shef, perhaps my favorite Big Boy imitator. I just love that tangy zip, y'all!

Within a few minutes, my order was ready, and with cautious optimism, I unwrapped the first sandwich. Sure enough, it was a double deck burger on a three-piece bun with a pair of two-ish ounce patties, a single slice of cheese, shredded lettuce, and a chunky white sauce. It was a renamed Big Shef, Burger Chef's knockoff of Bob Wian's Big Boy, which beat McDonald's knockoff, the Big Mac, to market. My first bite confirms the sandwich's true identity. As with the Big Shef I had at Suzi's, (They call theirs the Double Decker.) the sauce had the unmistakably tangy zip of Miracle Whip, which served as the base for the special sauce Burger Chef put on the Big Shef. Unlike Suzi's however, this Big Shef had the flavor of the 1960s, as the patties had been cooked in a flame broiler as they would have prior to the General Foods era. You've gotta love food that's era-appropriate to the building. If Suzi's is the 1970's exhibit in a hypothetical Burger Chef museum, The Chef is its 1960s counterpart. 

and a modern-day Super Shef; Add some sesame seeds to that bun, and it could pass for a Whopper.

I then gave my Super Deluxe, aka Super Shef a try. This is my first Super Shef, as I usually opt for a Chicken Club of Fisherman's Fillet as my second sandwich in addition to my customary Big Shef when I visit Suzi's. The original Super Shef was a deluxe burger with all the typical toppings garnishing a quarter-pound patty, essentially, Burger Chef's answer to Burger King's Whopper. Unsurprisingly, with it's flame broiled patty, The Chef's version of the Super Shef tastes strikingly similar to a Whopper. Given the ingredients, this is unsurprising. Likewise, Burger Chef's historic relationship to Burger King also contributed to my utter lack of surprise over the flavor of the Super Shef. General Equipment, Burger Chef's initial parent company supplied Burger King with flame broilers during the King's early days in business. Burger Chef, then a subsidiary of General Equipment used the same broilers. It's therefore no great mystery why the flavor of the Super Shef is so similar to the Whopper. 

When I build my dream house, I want it to have a room that looks just like this. 

As I finished up eating, I took a stroll around the dining room to bask in the vaulted ceiling glory of a historic Burger Chef structure. I was pleased to find framed pictures of the building as it looked in full Burger Chef regalia as well as a photo of the original menu board featuring the Big Shef and Super Shef at 1966 prices. The management here isn't shy about the business's heritage. Like Suzi's, they've expanded the breakfast menu for wider appeal. The building's interior has been modernized, but it's clear they're proud to be a former Burger Chef. They've preserved the Burger Chef menu, building, and brand to the greatest extent that they could given the legal and logistical constraints of outliving the Burger Chef brand by 37 years and counting. After a year on the road, The Chef gives me hope. 

The same building, 52 years ago

Sadly, The Chef serves Coke products rather than RC Cola these days. In many ways, RC Cola is the Burger Chef of colas. 

I dread the day that I run out of places to visit and write about for Broken Chains. I've recently found myself casting a wider net and travelling farther in search of places that are still operating under their original names. Places like The Chef, Suzis, and indeed, Fowlerville Farms and Farmstead, give me hope that there are more holdouts of broken chains nearby hiding in plain sight, doing business as they always have, but under new names so as not to arouse the legal teams of whatever corporate entities control their brand names today. Though they rarely use it, Hardee's parent company, CKE, is very protective of the Burger Chef name, hence the necessity of former locations disguising their true identity. I look forward to the prospect of tracking down other holdout businesses conducting business as usual under new names. When I find other broken chain locations that have entered witness protection, I'll be sure to out them here. Hopefully my writing will serve to increase their foot traffic without getting them sued. 

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out the Broken Chains Facebook Page, where I announce new posts, and post occasional bonus content. 

Burger Chef is Alive and Her Name is Suzi

Aside from the sign, this place looks much like it would have as a Burger Chef 40 years ago.

When I started this blog, I had a few assumptions, one of which was that Burger Chef was deader than a keg of doornails, and having been born after the majority of Burger Chef locations had closed or been converted to Hardee's, I had not and would never encounter any dining establishment bearing any meaningful resemblance to Burger Chef within my lifetime. While I did my best to accept it, the lack of Burger Chef in my life nagged at me. I'd idly while away hours looking at pictures of former Burger Chef locations and old advertising materials, reading about the chain's history, even purchasing and reading Flameout: The Rise and Fall of Burger Chef, a comprehensive history of the brand, written by the ironically surnamed John P. McDonald. It was this ravenous consumption of Burger Chef related content that led me to one place where there's still a little bit of Burger Chef magic left, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Burger Chef evolved from General Equipment, an Indiana-based supplier of restaurant equipment. Among other products, General Equipment supplied Burger King with its flame broilers in their early days. General Equipment executives, Bob Wildman and Frank and Don Thomas opened their first restaurant in 1954 to showcase their line of machines to prospective customers and the general public. The restaurant was an overnight success that would be developed into the franchised business that became known as Burger Chef. The first franchised locations opened in the late fifties, and expanded quickly. Franchisees were carefully vetted, and as a result, coupled with the fast food boom of the late '50s and early '60s the majority of franchises were successful. To aid expansion, Burger Chef would cosign the mortgages on the restaurant properties of new franchisees. This practice led the company to the brink of not having enough collateral to support new loans. In need of additional capital, Burger Chef accepted a buyout offer from General Foods in 1968. This was a common problem in the fast food industry at the time. Burger King was acquired by Pillsbury around the same time for similar reasons.

During the '60s and early '70s, the Burger Chef brand evolved, and brought about innovations that would become standard in the fast food industry. Burger Chef was the first major burger chain to offer a fish sandwich, mainly to cater to franchisees in predominately Catholic areas who were losing business on Fridays. (Ray Kroc infamously tried to market a pineapple sandwich called the Hulaburger to remedy this same problem for McDonald's franchisees before settling on the much more popular Filet O Fish.) Likewise, Burger Chef's double decker Big Boy knockoff burger, the Big Shef beat the Big Mac to market. Burger Chef was also the originator of the kids meal, with their Burger Chef and Jeff characters and Funmeal line. They even unsuccessfully attempted to sue McDonald's when they launched the Happy Meal a few years later.

With infusions of cash from General Foods, Burger Chef continued to expand rapidly, becoming the second largest American restaurant chain in 1971 with over 1,200 locations, within 100 or so of McDonald's at the time. The General Foods takeover was what eventually would bring about Burger Chef's decline, however. Unfamiliar with the restaurant business, General Foods mismanaged the brand. They made frequent changes to Burger Chef's logos and buildings. Franchise agreements had few provisions requiring franchisees to update their buildings, and many didn't, resulting in a lack of brand consistency.  The constant changes in signage and packaging along with pressure to modernize buildings served to alienate longtime franchisees, as did newly appointed corporate personnel overseeing franchised locations on a regional basis. Flame broiling was even eventually abandoned in favor of burgers cooked on electric griddles. The lack of consistent branding and an increasingly antagonistic relationship with the franchisees, as well as rapidly approaching market saturation caused growth to stagnate as other brands continued to grow internationally. The beginning of the end occurred in 1982, when General Foods' Burger Chef division was sold to Imasco, a Canadian tobacco conglomerate, who had purchased Hardee's the year previous with the goal of quickly amassing a nationwide fast food chain. 

Burger Chef's mostly midwestern market made for a significant territory expansion when added to Hardee's mostly southern market. Around this time, most Burger Chef locations converted to Hardee's locations. Burger Chef franchisees located sufficiently far enough away from the nearest Hardee's were offered Hardee's franchises. Burger Chef franchisees in existing Hardee's markets, located too close to existing Hardee's locations were allowed to continue to operate as Burger Chef until their franchise agreements expired. Most of the remaining Burger Chef franchisees had either closed, changed restaurant formats, or at least had changed their names by the early 1990's. The last remaining Burger Chef, located in Cookeville, Tennessee changed its name to Pleasers in 1996 following an ownership change, and would eventually close.

Schroeder's in Danville, Illinois is what most fans consider to have been Burger Chef's last stand. After their franchise agreement expired in 1992, they changed their name as well as the trademarked names of their menu items, and continued business as usual well into the current decade. Their decline came quickly after an ownership change and ultimately led to their permanent closure in 2015. I missed my chance to eat at Schroeder's, and I thought, I'd never have a chance at a Burger Chef experience, until I stumbled upon a few mentions of a former Burger Chef location in West Virginia operating as Suzi's. They seemed to be known more for breakfast biscuit sandwiches than burgers, but the pictures I saw of original Burger Chef menu boards on the inside of a well-preserved General Foods-era Burger Chef building caught my attention. A newspaper article mentioned the place was partially owned by a former Burger Chef regional manager. The presence of a double decker burger on the menu that I suspected was a debranded Big Shef meant that the first time I was anywhere near South Charleston, West Virginia I'd be taking a trip to Suzi's seeking out the next best thing to Schroeder's.

Original drive thru menu and speaker. The Burger Chef logo would have originally adorned the center panel. 

Indoor menu board, I believe the Chicken Club and Works Bar panels to be original Burger Chef units. 

A spur of the moment trip down to Lexington, Kentucky for a family gathering plus some extra free time while I was down south meant that I was able to make the six hour round trip from Lexington to South Charleston and back (with an obligatory quick stop at the Huntington G.D. Ritzy's on the return trip). It's midday Saturday when I hop off I-64 in South Charleston, rolling past a Hardee's near the off ramp, whose presence I suspect helped to preserve the Burger Chef that would become Suzi's. I park in the mostly full parking lot and marvel at the original drive thru menu board, and walk into the impeccably clean, yet decidedly vintage dining area. The staff are attentive and wearing matching uniforms. To my delight, a General Foods-era menu board is still present, with modern menu additions added in matching font. The Burger Chef Works Bar, stocked with burger toppings and condiments is also still there. I'm tempted to order a biscuit sandwich, but I came here for Burger Chef food, and breakfast biscuits are plentiful in West Virginia. I order a Chicken Club, and a Double Decker and take them to a table for examination.

The Works Bar in all its simulated woodgrain gory

My new favorite chicken sandwich

The Double Decker, a renamed Big Shef, that seems to be very close to its late 1970's iteration

Burger Chef's novel plastic sandwich wrappers are long gone, as is any branded packaging. My sandwiches are in plain white Styrofoam clamshell containers. The Chicken Club, which was a late '70s menu addition, is exactly as it is pictured on the menu board with a breaded fried chicken breast and four strips of bacon. It's appearance is uncanily accurate to the illustration. To my delight, it's been cooked fresh, and is a really tasty chicken sandwich. I dissect the Double Decker to evaluate its authenticity. I find all the trappings of a Big Shef, the double cut bun, single slice of cheese, and finely shredded lettuce and a white special sauce containing relish and minced onions. I take a bite and am greeted with the unmistakable tangy zip of Miracle Whip. I believe this to be authentic Big Shef sauce or a reasonable facsimile thereof. The copycat recipes I've encountered all call for Miracle Whip rather than mayonnaise. The beef patties have been cooked on a griddle, rather than flame broiled, which is consistent with the General Foods-era vibe of the place. I believe this to be as close to an authentic Big Shef as one is likely to encounter anywhere. The same can be said for the Chicken Club. They both seem to have been made to order. There are a few other items on the menu, I suspect to also be recreations of Burger Chef items, so I'll have to give them a try on subsequent visits. I'll be back to enjoy every sandwich.

While Suzi's isn't the frozen in time Burger Chef-in-all-but-name that Schroeder's seemed to be, it's a nice blend of new and old. The expansive breakfast menu seems well-integrated into the operation and signage of the place. Likewise, it seems to be clean, well-run, and reasonably prosperous. Most importantly, they're keeping the old Burger Chef recipes alive. I suspect this is the most Burger Chefish place left in operation. If Schroeder's was the most authentic remnant of Burger Chef, I'd wager that with Schroeder's gone, Suzi's is the next best thing. 

Edit: This is the first of two locations I've found that approximate a modern-day operational Burger Chef. You can read about the other one here. 

Also, don't forget to check out my many other blog posts about operating locations of defunct, endangered, and diminished restaurant and retail chains.

You can also like Broken Chains on Facebook to see announcements of new posts, and occasional bonus pictures in your feed.