The Oklahoma smash burger has entered the chat. Onions fried in the juices of a smash burger? Get to know it—you’re going to love it at the new Wells Roadside, which just opened in St. Louis Park.
I popped in Saturday night when the Craft & Crew team was doing a soft opening for the neighborhood near Highway 7 in St. Louis Park, a neighborhood that’s been irritated with the traffic from the old Galaxy Drive-In, then the blight of a shuttered restaurant when that closed down.
C&C dropped invitations at the doors of nearby residents, and they showed up big time. Good friends of ours live in the neighborhood, walked over, and they were absolutely stoked to have Wells Roadside open year-round (Hi, Chad and Danielle!).
THE BURGER
The menu is simple and affordable: $6 smash burger, $10 double smash, $13 triple smash. Choose a traditional (Wells) smash burger or the aforementioned fried onion Oklahoma smash burger.
I loved the Okie burger—perfect temp, great beefy flavor (25% American Wagyu in the blend), with a nice sweetness from the onions fried in the juices of the burger. Add a small bag of fries for $3 (enough for two to share)—they’re hand-cut freshly in the kitchen, too.
NOT BURGERS
We loved the split Chicago hot dog, Wagyu beef, which is sliced in half and also smashed on that griddle ($11). There’s also a sneaky delicious smashed breakfast sandwich with Jimmy Dean sausage, and on that same tasty burger bun, they just turn it inside out and toast it—so, it gives sort of an English muffin vibe ($6). A salad and a salad with salmon round out the menu. There are soft serve shakes and floats, too.
DRINKS
There’s a custom IPA from neighbor Steel Toe Brewing (reminds me of one of my favorite beers in the state, the Size 4 IPA), and four tapped cocktails from the team at Earl Giles.
The cocktails are fun—root beer old fashioned and a cherry cola smash, as well as a Tom Collins riff ($12).
THE KITCHEN SMASH BURGER ROBOT MACHINE
Owners Luke Derheim and David Benowitz showed me their cool automated smashburger griddle, which they told me they actually bought from Blue Plate Restaurant Co.’s David Burley, who was testing it at the Lowry. This is a flat-top with three automated smash weights that drop on the burger, sear it at the perfect temperature for about 25 seconds, then lift up and lowers to sort of a floating height so it melts the cheese and toasts the buns. [Watch it on my instagram!]
It has capacity to do 24 burgers at once, cooktime would be 40 seconds or so, so the total process with adding cheese and spatula-ing the beef onto buns is under two minutes. On the soft open night, you’d order at the front window, pick up at the back, and it was fast. Impressive!
YEAR-ROUND OUTDOOR DINING
They’ll do a ton of takeout here for the neighborhood, but there are tables on a covered patio, which will have the ability to be closed in with overhead heaters for the winter.
In the style of all the Craft & Crew Restaurants (The Howe, The Block SLP, etc.), there is a pet-friendly Pawtio. Wells Roadside will be open from 10:30 a.m.–10:30 p.m., year-round. If this goes well, Benowitz and Derheim would love to open more of them.
Wells Roadside, 3712 Quebec Ave. S., St. Louis Park, wellsroadside.com
