Place: Original Tommy's
Lunch: Cheeseburger (no tomato), chili fries, Pibb
I was reading some reviews on Yelp for something else when I ran across reviews for Original Tommy's, a So-Cal tradition that's been around since 1946, who just recently started opening outlets in Vegas.
It was immediately apparent that newcomers to Tommy's often suffered a case of what I call "White Castle Syndrome". Everybody's heard of White Castle, but since they operate in limited markets, most people haven't actually tried them. After years of buildup by the White Castle faithful, when the moment finally arrives, they're expecting the holy grail of hamburgers and are horribly disappointed with the actual product....something they see as a meat flavored dinner roll.
Such is the case with Tommy's. Tommy's "cheeseburger", like all their burgers (and pretty much every hot food item on the menu), is topped with chili. The chili is an unapologetically greasy thick meat paste with a texture more like refried beans. It's applied generously along with onions, mustard, a thick tomato slice (hold on mine please) and the biggest pickle slices you've ever seen. It may be the gutbomb to end all gutbombs. A number of the negative reviews of this particular location joke that the fact it's next to St Rose Dominican Hospital is a matter of convenience.
Being the lover of low-rent old school fast food that I am, I had to try it. So I did so Saturday night.
And it's awesome.
It's the best chili cheeseburger I've ever had.
Good lord it's good.
I also sampled other things. Amazingly, I'm not all that impressed with their chili dog. Mostly because of the dog. Or the chili fries. The fries work much better with ketchup. They also have a chili covered tamale I'll reserve for a future visit. I'd wondered where Wienerschnitzel got that idea when they LTO'd one last year.
Anyway, I'm back today to make sure the burger was as good as I thought it was initially.
It is. But even I couldn't down more than one or two of these a month. Jeepers.
Las Vegas has become home to a lot of low-rent old-school chili and coney-related outposts in recent years. Pink's is here. Nathan's is here. American Coney Island (from Michigan) is here. Even Steak n Shake (best chili ever) has a location in a casino now.
Now if we could just convince Skyline to get out here...
