Elbow Room offers peanut butter on a bun

Peanut butter, onions and pickles. The last two toppings are normal hamburger fare, but the same can’t be said for the first.

The Limey Burger at The Elbow Room in Albert Lea is not your ordinary burger.

Vic Nelson, owner of the Elbow Room since 1972, was looking for ways to expand the menu at the small restaurant, which has been serving up since 1952 what book authors say are some of the best burgers in the state. The menu has classic-style hamburgers and cheeseburgers with usual toppings, but Nelson wanted more.

Nelson said one of his customers suggested it to him six or seven years ago, saying they had eaten it somewhere else. This is a similar backstory to the Elbow Room’s Egg Burger.

The name Limey hearkens from a somewhat unkind nickname for a British person, or a Limey.

Nelson said the burger isn’t nearly one of the top sellers at the restaurant. That honor is given to regular burgers and patty melts.

Rachael Godtland, a waitress at the Elbow Room, said the restaurant maybe sells one Limey Burger per day.

However, the Limey Burger is usually one of the more surprising sandwiches on the menu, along with the Egg Burger, Gyro-Burger and Philly Style Burger. Nelson said many people order it just to try it out, and Godtland said when customers try it, they love it. She said some customers even order it with cheese.

Godtland herself hasn’t tried the burger, because she isn’t a big fan of peanut butter.

While Nelson got the idea for the burger from a customer, Godtland said she’s never heard of a burger like it before.

This reporter had to try it, too. Most people know about how good the Elbow Room’s burgers are, but I wasn’t sure what a burger with peanut butter would taste like. In a word, it’s delicious.

The peanut butter is the only sauce on the burger, so in my mind it kind of replaced mayonnaise, due to its creaminess. The combination of pickles, onions and peanut butter also wasn’t as strange as it sounds.

I think that the peanut butter replaces a fat element that can be found in mayonnaise. Food science tells us that fat just makes food taste good, especially when it’s warmed up. Peanut butter on a burger definitely falls into that camp.

Also, the burger’s price of $4.60 can’t be beat, especially for something as unusual as a burger with peanut butter on it. It almost sounds like something a fancy burger joint might offer.

Nelson said since he bought the restaurant in 1972 he’s been expanding the menu and trying new things. The restaurant always maintains its status of having the best burgers in town, he said.

 

What’s a Limey?

Limey: noun (pl. -eys) chiefly derogatory

a British person.

ORIGIN late 19th cent.: from lime + -y, because of the former enforced consumption of lime juice to prevent scurvy in the British navy.