B2A2: Blimpy Burger

Three entries into B2A2, the series has covered burgers conceived by trained chefs. Blimpy Burger offers a different proposition: a counter format where the customer chooses the build.

Blimpy Burger does not work that way.

At 304 S Ashley St, you join the line and wait your turn. When you reach the counter, you call out your order: patties and bun first, then grilled items when asked, then cheese when asked, then condiments. Don't say cheese until they ask. Don't talk when you're not ordering. Don't hold up the line. The regulars know the protocol, and the staff expects you to learn it. There is no menu to interpret, no sauce with a backstory. There is a flat-top, a list of toppings, and you. The burger is yours because you built it.

This is the fourth entry in B2A2, Best Burger in Ann Arbor. After the Raven's Club smash burger, the Frita Batidos frita, and the Echelon smash burger, Blimpy provides a useful counterpoint: a build-your-own burger with a long-running Ann Arbor identity.

The Burger

You choose your size. You choose your toppings. You choose your cheese. The person behind the counter slaps the patty on the flat-top, presses it down, and builds the thing in front of you. The process is fast, direct, and has not changed in any meaningful way since Blimpy opened.

The patty is not a smash burger in the Raven's Club or Echelon sense. It's thicker, looser, cooked through rather than seared to a hard crust. The beef is solid and unpretentious. It doesn't taste like dry-aged anything. It tastes like a burger: ground beef on a hot grill, the fat rendering into the surface, the edges getting a little crisp while the center stays soft. If you've been eating carefully calibrated smash patties for three weeks, that simplicity hits different.

The toppings are where Blimpy shows its range. Fried egg. Grilled onions. Fried mushrooms. Jalapeños. Olives. You can stack a triple with four cheeses and a fried egg on top if that's who you are today. Nobody will judge you. Nobody will suggest a pairing. The counter person will build it, wrap it, and hand it over.

The classic build is a double with American cheese, grilled onions, pickles, and mustard. Because toppings are selected at the counter, diners can keep the burger spare or add the full list of grilled items and condiments.

The Fries

Thick-cut and deep-fried. They come out of the fryer dark golden, salted, and piled into the tray next to your burger. They are not delicate. They are not seasoned with anything besides salt. They are hot, crunchy, and gone in about four minutes.

No aioli. No house sauce. Ketchup is on the counter. Grab it yourself.

The Room

The current location followed Blimpy's move from Division Street in 2013 and reopening in fall 2014. It is a small counter operation with limited seating, a grill, a fryer, and a straightforward order-to-go flow.

Cash only. Bring cash.

The experience takes about fifteen minutes from the moment you walk in to the moment you walk out holding a greasy bag. Compare that to Echelon, where you're sitting down for a cocktail and a properly paced meal. Compare it to Raven's Club, where the lighting alone suggests you should slow down. Blimpy is not interested in your evening. It's interested in feeding you.

Where It Fits

Four entries in, and B2A2 now has a real spectrum.

Raven's Club is discipline. Two thin patties, garlic aioli, everything calibrated. Frita Batidos is personality. Chorizo-beef, shoestring fries on top, a Cuban lineage that predates the American hamburger. Echelon is firepower. A James Beard kitchen treating a bar staple with the same focus it gives the rest of the menu.

Blimpy is democracy. You get what you ask for. The quality comes from the grill and the simplicity of the format, not from a chef's training or a cocktail program. There is no vision here beyond giving you a burger the way you want it, cooked on a flat-top that has been doing this since before most of the other restaurants in this series existed.

Is it the best burger in Ann Arbor? That's not the right question for Blimpy. The place isn't competing with Echelon's sear or Raven's Club's restraint. It's making a different argument: that a great burger doesn't require a point of view. It requires a hot grill, decent beef, and the freedom to put whatever you want on it.

Blimpy's place in the series is its directness: the diner sets the build, the grill does the work, and the meal stays focused on the burger.

This is part of our ongoing series. Read the full tracker: Best Burger in Ann Arbor (B2A2): The Running List.

Blimpy Burger is at 304 S Ashley St, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. Cash only.