Is it Minnesota’s most iconic food export? There’s Betty Crocker and “hotdish”. But the iconic Juicy Lucy, or Jucy Lucy depending on where you are, has become synonymous with Minnesota food.
So it’s time to settle the debate once and for all: Who has the best Juicy Lucy?
Food Editor for Minneapolis-St. Paul Magazine Stephanie March joined WCCO’s Drivetime with DeRusha for “DeRusha Eats” this week and they went deep into the oozy, messy world that is the Juicy Lucy. There are deep-seated feelings when it comes to this burger. From its origins, how to spell it (seriously), to how it is made and then to how to (carefully) eat it.
Also, we’re not interested in your Juicy Lucy’s New York (Chicago or wherever). This one is ours. Get your napkins ready, order a snit of beer, and let’s dive in.
Jason DeRusha: Matt’s Bar and the 5-8 Club. The spelling is emblematic of the larger debate between these two restaurants with different claims as to creating this.
Stephanie March: Yeah. The origin story is definitely part of like, the mystique I think, and the spelling kind of lends into that.
DeRusha: I believe they've been fighting since the 1950s about this. Matt's is the dive bar. The 5-8 Club is pretty divey. But it’s not a dive.
March: It's tavern-y, I would say. I would give it a tavern feel is what I want to feel about 5-8 (Club).
DeRusha: Have you tasted every Juicy Lucy that people debate about in this town?
March: I think I've definitely had the prime, you know, contenders. I would say from 5-8, Matt’s, and then of course we go over to The Nook in St. Paul. We have Blue Door. And then there's plenty, plenty of locals who do their own and have a different version, which is awesome. That's how it should be.
DeRusha: Which Juicy Lucy is better?
March: Okay. So, for me personally, I do have to say that my very first Jucy Lucy was my Nana. My grandmother took me when I was 12-years old to Matt's Bar and I had my first Jucy Lucy when I was 12-years old. So I do have like a little bit of a bias, I think, for it. Right. Then, of course I've taken all my kids, I've gone on first dates there, like all sorts of crazy things in my Minnesota life have brought me to Matt's Bar. For me, that's the moment. Now I like the 5-8 Juicy Lucy.
I like the Saucy Sally too, p.s. But the Juicy Lucy is a different consistency.
I almost feel like they're two, it's like two different versions that are both equally right for what they want to be. I don't have to pick one over the other.
DeRusha: Why do you think someone came up with this idea? It just is sort of crazy. A burger with cheese on top of it is so delightful. Who said, you know what, what if we just shove it right in the middle of the patty? It's not ideal. It’s not the ideal delivery mechanism system.
March: No. And I want to know if that person who first took that first bite, the guy sitting at the counter at Matt’s or whatever, did they just like scald their face and be like this is horrible. This is wrong. What are you doing? I'm going to have a lawsuit. But instead we think no, instead it became this hallmark.
DeRusha: Have you ever burned your tongue?
March: Oh God yeah.
DeRusha: Do you think the warning is more just to hype it up? I've burned my tongue on pizza. No one's like ‘Jason, be careful!’
March: It's the potential squish. Don't you have to warn people? When you take people from out of town there? Because I've had to. When the Super Bowl was here, I brought a Philly news station crew there. I was like, please be careful. They don't believe you. And so you have to have the warning. It’s hot.
DeRusha: I think the Juicy Lucy is cool because it's ours. That's what makes it special. From a culinary standpoint, I would prefer a regular cheeseburger nine times out of ten. I'm just saying, it's no disrespect no to the Juicy Lucy. But we love it because it's ours, right?
March: I think so. I think there's definitely some cache to it being invented here. We're homers, we love our town thing. We are homers to the end. Here's the thing, it's a novelty. It’s okay to love a novelty that's part of our heritage. I'm not mad at that.
DeRusha: Most regional specialties are sort of novelties.
March: Right. Detroit’s pizza. We talked about that. The Chicago hot dog.
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DeRusha: I think it's a little overrated. I love a cheeseburger but I also love a Juicy Lucy. It just wouldn’t be my first choice.
March: They’re two animals. I think they're two different things. I don't like it when people compare cheeseburgers to Juicy Lucy’s. They're very different categories.
DeRusha: Great texts coming in about the Juicy Lucy. Donna says the 5-8 has the best Juicy Lucy. She does prefer a cheeseburger though, because she likes the burger medium-rare. That is a common complaint about the Juicy Lucy is that it's overcooked, that it's dry and burnt. What do you think?
March: I think that the concert of cheese, and if you get onions on it and that's your call, but I think that it can't really be too overcooked because the center is still going to be molten. You know what I mean? So it's just the adjacency. I think that most people are used to their medium-rare burgers, which I am a definite medium-rare burger girl for sure. And I love that. I'm also used to, when you have a thin patty, you don't see pink and it's still beautiful. So I think people react and they think that way. You're not going to get that same thing, but you have a giant pool of cheese in the middle that is keeping the thing moist and lovely.
DeRusha: We love smash burgers because they give you that crispy edge, that lacey crispy edge to it. And a good Juicy Lucy will often have some of those characteristics.
March: It should.
Why doesn’t it? And if you want to talk about the fact that a good hard sear on those little suckers that comes from especially the Matt's griddle which I feel like has been seasoned for 30 years. You have to get it and you also have to eat it there. That's the other thing about the Juicy Lucy. You can't take it out. Remember Chrissy Teigen, she came to town.She went and she grabbed a whole bunch of burgers and then drove to the North Loop or something for a meeting with Target. And she was like, ‘eh, don't get the hype’. Well no, you can't.
DeRusha: The cheese coagulates.
March: Not even the same thing. So it's very specific.
DeRusha: I have made Juicy Lucy’s at home with limited success.
Because a lot of times the cheese will kind of seep out of it especially if you're doing it on a grill instead of a griddle.
March: Yeah. No, I think it has to be a griddle. I'm going to just advocate, if you're going to make 'em at home, you have to think about a nice chunk of cheese in the middle there. And also, here's a little tip. IF you keep your cheese kind of frozen or very, very, very cold right from the fridge. Put it in the burger, crimp it up and get it on the griddle. You're going to have a much better chance.
DeRusha: Respond to this text. “Juicy Lucy’s are crap. The cheese separates and becomes liquefied. So when you bite into it, it just pours out into a mess around your face or on your plate.”
March: If it's the good processed cheese, it's not going to separate. Like this is a processed cheese moment.
DeRusha: You raise a very good point because sometimes chefs try to over-chef stuff. “I've come up with this fancy cheese that I make.”
March: No, don't. Cheese sauce. Cheese sauce. Cheese sauce. Let's be clear about the fact that the chefs can make cool cheese sauce too. That's true. The St. Dinette burger has that beautiful sort of champagne cheese sauce on it. And I'm just saying like, it's okay to be a little processy in this moment.
DeRusha: Why do you think it's important for a community, for a state to have something in the food world to claim as our own? I do think it's important to have something that's ours.
March: You know, I'm going to say this just in the way that the Midwest has identity issues anyway, because we see shiny coastal celebrations and people getting excited about doing things that we've been doing for a long time. And having their own identities and talking about themselves and so then they kind of ignore us. So we have this sort of shiny thing that they do take notice of it. And let's be clear, a cheeseburger that's an innovation on a cheeseburger? That's going to fly well anywhere. So then when they did discover it, people find that they think that we have something cool. We like to feel sort of a little special.
DeRusha: We put our flag in the ground and say, you know, that spoon bridge and cherry? That's us. Prince? That's us. The Juicy Lucy? That’s us. That’s our time. We did it.
March: There's also something a little democratic about the cheeseburger in that we can't claim that we invented the cheeseburger obviously. Or the hamburger. But there's something about the fact that that's kind of a universally American moment in that it kind of fits in a lot of different cultures and it has a lot of different versatilities. And I think that is one thing that helps bind us together. And we like to be that.
DeRusha: I think this was fun. Who's going to be more mad at us? Matt's or 5-8? 5-8 sort of gets a short end of the stick.
March: I mean, Matt's got visited by the president.
DeRusha: It's a better picture. They have a great exterior.
March: It’s a little more iconic.
DeRusha: It was better when before they started taking credit cards though.
March: I don't know about that, but I'm going to just say that for me it's the cheap situation. If I had to pick one, they were sitting in front of me and I was only allowed to eat one, I would definitely go for Matt’s because of my own personal heritage. But I think my heritage, it is my heritage. But it's the consistency of the cheese for me on that. Just like, that's the one that ticks that one up for me.
See all of our "DeRusha Eats" stories here.
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