Relish: Lankford Grocery no longer tasty

By Siegfried Bilstein and Dan Nelson     2/10/11 6:00pm

You know when that sitcom you really, really like starts getting crappy? Like when Jim and Pam got married on "The Office," or when Jessica Biel moved out of her house on "7th Heaven"? We experienced a moment exactly like that when we decided to go review Lankford Grocery, a burger place located in a secret corner of Montrose. Having been there several times before, we were excited to share the experience with the dudes we pay to live with us because we have no friends. Yet, for reasons we don't understand, Lankford wasn't at the top of its game last week. Lankford Grocery, not to be confused with Langford Market (that place that sells women's clothing in The Village), is a hole-in-the-wall burger joint located in what appears to be a condemned house. With floors that curve like waves in the Pacific breaking on the beach in front of you during a beautiful sunset, walking around the restaurant feels a bit topsy-turvy. The overall vibe is like you've been placed in a Norman Rockwell painting, if Rockwell dropped enough acid one day to decide he was M.C. Escher. Actually, the warped floors are a little disconcerting the first time you visit, but after a while they're all part of the charm of this decidedly ?unhealthy establishment.

Fact: On its website, Lankford advertises that it has "Nothing Small, Nothing Healthy, and Nothing Fast." The first two are definitely true, but usually service is fast, provided the place isn't totally packed. Granted, it often is very full around lunchtime with real people who have real jobs, and it closes at 3 p.m. Although the inside is a bit cramped, Lankford has plenty of room outside if you don't mind braving the bitter Houston cold.

During this visit, Dan attempted to eat the most American (unhealthy) of all the foods that Lankford has to offer: the Grim burger, topped with mac & cheese, bacon, a fried egg and jalapenos. The flavor was a bit underwhelming; based on Lankford's Firehouse burger (more on that in a second), he expected the jalapenos to be super spicy and go awesomely with the mac & cheese. Instead, the whole affair tasted like a pretty bland, cheesy heart attack, with most of the flavor dominated by the fried egg and macaroni.

---

---

Siegfried ordered the Wasabi burger, which is offered on the specials menu pretty frequently. Having had it before, he expected the kind of spiciness that reminded him of the time in fifth grade when he thought wasabi was green ice cream that came with sushi as dessert. He had ordered the burger last summer and enjoyed a scorchingly hot, yet tasty, lime green sauce covering raw white onions and a pineapple slice on a lightly seasoned burger. This time, however, the sauce was closer to white and tasted more like mayo with just a little wasabi. The purpose of the pineapple is to contrast the wasabi, and sugar mitigates heat, but this time, while delicious, the sweet pineapple and pungent onions overwhelmed the wasabi.

Our coarser roommate ordered a generic burger and didn't have much to say about it, except "Bubba's is better." Our shorter, cuter roommate got a South of the Border burger and said that it lacked the advertised pico de gallo and tasted a lot more like a Caesar Salad burger. The waitress told him that the pico was, in fact, on there, but the taste and tomatoes were absent. We also got a bunch of sweet potato fries to share, and they were pretty delicious.

Any discussion of Lankford is incomplete without mention of the Firehouse burger, which has been featured in one of those Travel Channel food porn shows ("Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives"), and tastes like eating the sun. We defy you to find any spicier food anywhere ever. We've both struggled through eating this burger in the past, and we recommend the experience to anyone who doesn't mind awkwardly sweating for the next day or so.

Overall, for some reason we still can't understand, Lankford just wasn't that good when we went to review it. Having been there several times before, both of us think this low-quality visit was a total anomaly. But it did still happen, and that's what counts when you're real upstanding journalists like we are. It pained us to write this negative review about one of our favorite places, so from now on we're only going to review things that we hate. Like East Servery. Or Hitler.

Siegfried Bilstein and Dan Nelson are Wiess College seniors.

---