Chrissie Hynde & Akron Burgers

......Then, the meaty Menches Brothers restaurant is on 3700 Massillion Rd. in Green, about 10 minutes south of Akron. I visited the Menches Brothers restaurant in downtown Akron, next to the new Canal Park baseball stadium. That is a seasonal operation. The Menches eaterly lays claim to creating the hamburger. And it is a kick ass hamburger. It includes coffee and brown sugar--think a Rolling Stones burger. The Menches Brothers also had the idea for the first ice cream cone. And caramel coated peanuts and popcorn.
And you thought Akron was just about burning rubber.
"We have people traveling from Dallas and Pittsburgh on a monthly basis to eat here," VegitTerranean executive chef Scott Jones said in a mid-summer conversation on the restaurant's patio. He operates VegiTerranen with Hynde, Dan Duplain of Canton and Nick Szerkes of Canton. "You don't have to be a vegan or vegetarian," Jones said. "We cater to cardio patients, diabetic lifestyles. This is a fun place for people to come."
Jones attended the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. and spent 10 years at Johnny's, a popular Italian restaurant in Cleveland. Hynde knew of Jones and Duplain from their partnership at Fedeli, a sustainable Northern Italian restaurant in Canton. She has been a vegetarian for 39 years.
[I tried to reach out to Hynde through e-mail for the expanded Sept. 14 print edition of my trip to Akron--no response yet, but keep checking this web entry....]
Jones recalled, "When we started Fedeli we had 27 vegetarian items without even gearing it to be a vegetarian restaurant. She was very aware of us but we did have to educate her."
Jones prepared a vegan meal for Hynde at the beginning of their business partnership. "She said she was a vegetarian, but had cheeses from time to time," he said. "After a couple of meetings she was comfortable with the vegan direction." Jones said his vegan approach adds depthness of flavor with ingredients such as soy butters and tofu cream cheese.
One of the most popular dinner items is the Gardein Chicken, imported from Veg Advantage, a non-profit Vancouver, B.C. vegan-producer of Gardein. "It's pretty amazing," said Jones, who worked at Charlie Trotter's in Chicago in 1991. "It's 22 grams of protein, zero trans fat, zero chloesterol, zero saturated fat, 11 grams of sugar, 11 grams of sodium and very flavorful. And the texture looks like chicken."
As I left Jones was preparing to enter a vegan hamburger in Akron's Hamburger Festival. "The first vegan competition anywhere in America," he said. "People asked if we were crazy. Why not?"

It's that "Why not?" attitude that put Menches Brothers on the map.
I thought Seymour, Wis. was the birthplace of the hamburger, especially after I heard how 15-year-old "Hamburger Charlie" Nagreen debuted his meatball/hamburger concoction at the 1885 Seymour Fair. Seymour opened a Hamburger Hall of Fame that I profiled in January, 2000. [It's in my book "Ticket To Everywhere" along with a recipe for hamburger cookies.] But the Menches Brothers burger was born out of the state and county fair circuit Frank and Charles Menches traveled in the late 1800s.
My book is out of print, so to get more bang for your blog, here's that recipe. Menches Brothers hasn't laid claim to this yet:

2 vanilla wafers
Red frosting (sounds like a Grand Ole Opry star)
Green colored coconut
Yellow frosting
Thin mint patty

Place a wafer flat side up. Spread a dab of red frosting (ketchup) on top of the wafer. Dip the wafer into the green coconut (that would be the lettuce, follow me?) Put a dab of yellow frosting (mustard) on the flat side of the other wafer.
Place the thin mint (hamburger) on top of the yellow frosting. Place just a dab of red frosting on top of the mint to adhere it to the coconut.
Put both wafers together, coconut side to red frosted mint.
Chase with a stein of Burning River Pale Ale from Great Lakes Brewing Company out of Cleveland (served at VegiTerranean).

Yum !