Crown Burger Plus

** | Very Good Rating

Everyone's got a secret indulgence.

For some people, it's a stop at the drive-thru on the way home from work for a pre-dinner taco combo meal. For some, it's a box of cookies from the super-saver bin at the drug store, scarfed down after breakfast. A triple-double-Cream-o-ccino with extra chocolate shavings. A tube of Pringles.

My secret indulgence is an almost-weekly secret stop at Crown Burger Plus on South Downing Street for a burger and fries, or a bacon-egg- and-cheese breakfast sandwich.

Stuffed into a mini-strip just a few blocks from the University of Denver campus, you'd think that this place, which is little more than a massive griddle, a soft drink machine, and a few booths and counter seats,
would be jampacked with students cramming for finals or nursing hangovers.
And sometimes it is. But just as often, it's full of longtime neighborhood regulars, work crews from nearby fix-and-flips, doctors and nurses from Porter Hospital up the street and even uniformed employees of area fast-food joints.

They know, like I know, that when it's a greasy-spoon day, there's no place in the neighborhood better than the reliable Crown Burger Plus.

The place fires on all cylinders three meals a day, a constant-motion scene that is and has been played out in cities and towns across America for the last 60 years, as familiar and essential as a local pizza parlor or roadside pancake house.

At the height of the breakfast rush at Crown, there are maybe a dozen and a half eggs frying on that glorious griddle, bookended by rows of sizzling bacon strips. Buns are toasted to just this side (the right side) of burnt-around-

the-edges, then stacked with bacon, eggs and cheese before being wrapped in deli paper. Omlettes are filled, flipped and plated next to hot hashbrowns. Orders are taken, shouted, repeated and filled.

Best breakfast option is the breakfast sandwich (bacon,
eggs, cheese on a toasted hamburger bun). Me, I squirt a package of mayo on mine, because that's just how I roll. If you'd rather give it a pump of ketchup, be my guest.
One bummer: I am consistently let down by the coffee. I've never caught a fresh cup at the Crown Burger.

As the day progresses from breakfast through to suppertime, the eggs give up griddle space to hamburger patties (half draped in cheese, half happily naked) that sizzle away in neat rows next to mounds of pastrami and, naturally, bacon.

You should get one of these burgers on your first visit to the Crown. They are large, meaty and just greasy enough to satisfy your naughty cravings, but not so saturated that they make you sick.

If you're really in the spirit, you'll get the benchmark offering, the so-impressive-they-

named-the-place-after-it Crown Burger Plus, which features a lily-gilding stack of pastrami on top of the patty, taking the burger from just-barely wieldy to exhilaratingly messy, and turning the guilty-pleasure meal into an outright orgy of overindulgence.

You may never order it again - you may, like me, stick to straight-up burgers on future visits - but you'll enjoy it the first time around, and you'll never forget it.

Fries are a must. Orders are large and fresh, paper boats overflowing with skinny little crispy hot fries. Toss a few extra grains of salt over them as soon as your order is up (salt sticks better when the fries are hot) and gobble them down three and four at a time, dipping each bundle into the tiny paper cups of ketchup you filled at the pump up front.

On occasion, you'll want to buck your burger order and go for something else. One fine option is the Reuben sandwich, piled high (but not absurdly so) with corned beef and melty Swiss cheese on perfectly toasted rye. Squirt a few packets of mustard onto your plate to dip the sandwich halves in, bite-by-bite. Another good bet: the classic gyro, a pita topped with shaved meat, griddled onions and tzatziki.

Crown Burger Plus is not for dieters. And this is not healthy food. But it's honest, and for my money that makes it a better bet than almost any corporate fast-food burger chain.

Crown Burger Plus is also not for those searching out a prim and fancy meal. The menu is really a series of laminated color printouts taped to the wall, and the silverware is a DIY bin of plastic forks. You'll order at the counter, pay, throw a dollar in the tip jar, and pick up your burger when they shout out your number.

You'll fill your own paper cup with soda or iced tea, and you'll carry your own plastic tray to your booth, which features plastic floral indoor-outdoor tablecloths under a plastic topper.

You'll wish the dining room attendant wouldn't spray- clean the table beside you while you're eating - airborne Windex doesn't mix so well with a burgers-and-fries lunch - but at least they're cleaning the place.

And really, you wouldn't have it any other way. This place is a textbook greasy spoon, and fancy frills just wouldn't make sense. Besides, you can (as I often do) get your order to go, and chow down on the fries in the car on the way home.

So there it is. My guilty pleasure, disclosed. What's yours?

Dining critic Tucker Shaw can be reached at 303-954-1958 or at dining@denverpost.com.