National festival is main dish
Akron cooking up a hamburger bash
Mayor announces August event; �Coondog � all for it
By David Giffels Beacon Journal staff writer

Under the bright lights of television , Dave "C oondog"O�Karma paused in his enthusiastic consumption of a 10-pound, throw - pillow - size hamburger .

He looked up at the mayor, who was delivering a soliloquy to assembled members of the media about the ongoing resurgence of Akron�s downtown. Coondog, a celebrated Cuyahoga Falls professional speed eater/publicity hound, smiled in agreement .

He gave a cheesy thumbs-up, gestured for a glass of water, and resumed chewing. Mayor Do n Plusquellic, who previously had posed � as regally as possible � in a floppy cloth hamburger crown, was at the Menches Brothers Restaurant & Bar at Canal Park announcing Akron as the site of the National Hamburger Festival i n August.

The event is likely to draw extensive attention and continue defining Akron�s kitsch-Americana image in the eyes of the world. Soap Box Derby . Blimps . Bowling. Hamburgers. It all fits together.

The big news is that the event will include "Hamburger Hearings," in which the long - disput - ed origin of the hamburger will be considered by a judge and jury. Akron, by way of Hamburg, N.Y., is one of four cities that claim the burger�s founder ( s ) . The question of which burg deserves the legacy is heated, and its attempted solution is not likely to be pretty.

The contenders:

� Frank and C harles Menches o f Akron , who claimed to have concocted the hamburger in 1885 while working a county fair in Hamburg, N.Y. � Charles Nagreen of Se ymour , Wis., whose story mirrors the Menches� in almost every detail , including the year of supposed invention: 1885.

� Louis Lasser of Haven , Conn., who claimed to have created the A merican sandwich in 1900.

� Fletcher Davis of Athens , Texas , who said he slapped together the first burger in 1904.

The trials will be conducted amid a festival that also will include burger eating and cooking contests , a Jimmy Buffett cover band (the song Cheeseburger in Paradise is likely to get heavy play ), a "bobbing for burgers" competition and a Miss Hamburger pageant. The event will be held Aug. 12-13 in and around Canal Park.

Some of the proceeds will benefit Akron Children�s Hospital , which is in the midst o f a $100 million fundraising campaign , the largest in its history. (Fun fact: Children�s serves 900 hamburgers a week.)

Drew Cerza, the promoter of the hamburger festival, is springboarding from his experience with a wing festival in his hometown of Buffalo . Te so-alled ��Wing Ki ng�� said Friday that festival drew nearly 70, 000 to downtown Buffalo last summer , generating money, publicity and a sense of community pride.

The idea for this new event began when Coondog , a two-time Buffalo sausage champion, was digesting a loss in a Cerza - sponsored wing-eating contest. Coondog told Cerza he wanted him to do a hamburger festival in his hometown, and Cerza bit on the idea. Considering their past, it wasn�t much of a surprise that they�d concoct a culinary publicity stunt for the news conference.

They arranged for Menches Brothers chef Jim Lewis to cook a 15 - inch - diameter hamburger with about eight pounds of ground beef, plus about two pounds of bun and toppings � enough toppings and condiments to make a sandwich the approximate weight of an adult spaniel. After weighing in ("199 pounds of hamburger - eating hungry"), Coondog attacked the task with relish . And ketchup . (Most of a bottle). And mustard. And a pile of onions for which he apologized in advance to his wife. He was going to try to consume the giant hamburger in 10 minutes or less. (He failed.)

While he got down to business , Plusquellic took questions from reporters , prompting him to put this seemingly frivolous event into perspective. Twenty years ago, one could sit down in the middle of Main S treet and eat a hamburger without fear of being disturbed. Now, with the continued development of restaurants, entertainment venues , businesses and, most recently , residences downtown, a hamburger festival is (cholesterol aside) a sign of health. Plusquellic said when he became mayor in 1987, downtown business owners complained to him that the social infrastructure was decaying around them � workers didn�t even have a decent choice of places to go eat.

Al l he had to do Friday was glance to his left, where Coondog chowed through an embarrassment of Akron�s gustatory riches.
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David Giffels� column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.
He can be reached at 330- 996-3572 or at [email protected].