Gordy's Hi-Hat at 50

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When Gordy’s Hi-Hat opened in Cloquet, Minnesota, on July 1, 1960, Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House.

On the radio, Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely” and Sam Cooke’s “Wonderful World” warmed teen hearts. Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” with Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh and the decidedly friendlier “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies” with Doris Day and David Niven were box-office hits. Burgers at Gordy’s went for 19 cents.

It was, to be sure, a different time.

For their grand opening in 1960, owners Gordy and Marilyn Lundquist ran an ad in the paper  with a coupon for a

free hamburger, French fries and a drink.

For this year’s 50th anniversary, their son, Dan, who now oversees the business, plans a comeback for that ad and its coupon.

These days, the regular burger at Gordy’s goes for $2.59 – with choice of ketchup, mustard, pickles and raw or fried onions.

So some things have changed in a half century, but this nostalgic burger joint still delivers great burgers and polite service at affordable prices.

Stand in line at the counter and what seems chaotic is a rather orderly process. In a way, Gordy’s is “fast food,” since it takes only minutes to pick up an order. But flavor and quality here beat fast-food chains any old day.

Gordy’s is firmly rooted in the 1950s and in the early days of drive-ins and carhops.

Gordy and Marilyn built the first A&W Root Beer stand in Eveleth in 1952. Then, in 1955, they built London Inn Drive

Inn on London Road in Duluth, a hotspot for high school kids who could get a burger, fries and a shake for 57 cents.

That success led to opening Gordy’s at 411 Sunnyside Drive in Cloquet. Today, framed fun photos in black and white from those early days hang on the walls.

Pointing to one, Dan says, “There’s one woman who’s a customer of ours from 1960, and she can tell you exactly what time of day that picture was taken. She said, ‘That’s a Sunday at 11:15 because I came from church; that’s my church dress; I only wore that to church. I remember coming in here when you opened. It was July whatever,’ and she goes right down the list.”

At Gordy’s, most everything is handmade from scratch. Take the onion rings, which are tasty but not grease-laden like inferior rings. About 250 pounds of onions are cut per day; some days it can go to 350 pounds.

“So we cry a lot around here in the morning,” Dan jokes.

The onions are peeled and cut by hand rather than by machine. Then Gordy’s dips its rings in a mixture of buttermilk, pancake batter, breading and seasonings. The onions’ insides are saved for the grill and wind up on burgers.

“We hand patty our meat. ... People don’t do that anymore. Maybe small operations (do),” Dan explains. “There are machines that form patties, but we don’t do that.”

They’ve tried the machines, he says. The taste is not the same.

Gordy’s goes through 300 to 400 pounds of hamburger a day, which it buys as U.S.D.A. Choice from WW Johnson

Meat Company in Minneapolis five days a week and delivered by Upper Lakes Foods of Cloquet. Each patty starts out as a ball from an ice cream scoop before being flattened. With this technique, “you get the juices running through it ... you notice it when you grill it,” Dan remarks. “People that really love hamburgers notice it.”

So how does the staff fill orders so quickly if it’s all made fresh?

     First, at least 12 people work the grill.

     “We’ve got about 65 employees, but the key are these girls right here,” Dan says, pointing to four women in the kitchen. “They’re very seasoned. My mom (80-year-old Marilyn) ... she’s probably the best fry-grill cook that there is for what we do, which is incredible. One girl has been here 26 years; two others, 22 years (and) 15 years. Everybody that does this is very good at what they do.

“You get to that point where everything is in the process when the customer comes in. You’re getting it extremely fresh. Nothing is premade. It’s all in the process – boom, boom, boom, boom.”

Gordy and Marilyn, who live six months of the year in Florida, still work every day at the restaurant alongside Dan and the staff and have no plans to retire.

“It’s been an enjoyable business for Marilyn and I. We’ve enjoyed every day of it,” says Gordy, 82. “Some days are tougher than others, but most of the time it was a pleasure to come to work.”

What does he like on the menu? Gordy eats a burger every day, with mustard, ketchup, pickles and onions. Dan also has a hamburger. “It’s the onions that keep you healthy,” he says.

Longtime fans of Gordy’s remain committed, even passionate.

“We go there all the time,” says Grace Abrahamson of Duluth. “They have the most delicious food.”

Grace loves the California burger and the mushroom and swiss burger, but concedes it can be hard deciding what to get.

“If someone were to ask me where I would most want to eat, it would be at Gordy’s,” she says, endorsing it for birthdays, wedding anniversaries and other special occasions.

Grace and her husband, Ed, now enjoy taking granddaughters Lynn Berntsen, 5, and Lillie Golen, 4, to Gordy’s. Sometimes they’ll go next door afterward for dessert at Gordy’s Warming House, which features 32 flavors of Cedar Crest Ice Cream, as well as coffee, soups and sandwiches. The chili is homemade. There’s also a playground for the kids.

Lynn, daughter of Robin Berntsen of Duluth, and Lillie,  daughter of Sam and Carol Golen of Moose Lake, favor the cheeseburgers and the chicken tenders. The menu also has corn dogs and hot dogs for youngsters.

“I wish they would stay open in the winter because it’s a big disappointment when they close,” Grace says.

Forty percent of Gordy’s customers, Dan says, are Twin Cities’ residents on their way to lake cabins and vacations. “You get to know those people. It’s so much fun; in fact, that’s the best part of the business. You get to know people that go every weekend, back and forth, back and forth.”

There’s also strong support of local residents. Dan offers this story about true local folk: Former college basketball coach Bobby Knight, known for a volatile temper as well as for winning games, often stops by on fishing trips. Last summer, he stopped in with a local fishing pro. The local angler got requests for his autograph.

“You know you’re in northern Minnesota when somebody doesn’t recognize the famous Bobby Knight, but they recognize the guy that he’s fishing with.”

A few special events will help celebrate Gordy’s 50th season.

The Food Network’s Guy Fieri stops by for a few days starting May 13 to shoot Gordy’s for his TV show “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.”

The same day, Gordy’s hosts the annual Blessing of the Cars, as the local Nifty 50 Cruisers Car Club  brings car collectors to the parking lot to kick off a season of travel with just the right words from a priest and pastor.

Gordy’s and classic car fans have ties that go back years. The big event is July 29, when the annual Curbside Classic Car Show comes to Gordy’s, drawing such crowds that police officers are hired to manage traffic backed up on the highway.

The Lundquist family also plans a reunion for everyone who has ever worked at Gordy’s during the past 50 years. For some, that means more than one family member. “We have a number of people whose children work here now,” Dan says.

Gordy’s Hi-Hat typically opens between mid-March and early April for a season that lasts through September. Its opening is a welcome local sign of spring.

This year Gordy’s opened on Saturday, March 20, the first day of spring. The 50th year of welcoming a new season was, says Dan, “the best opener we’ve ever had.”