There are many paths you can walk down on the journey to becoming a world-beating short order cook. The road to greatness is fraught with difficulties brought on by outside elements including but not limited to the use of weights on your meats as they ride the flat-top.

Alisa, the new girl at Zuppardo’s (6 week tenure) knows this and demures from their use.

The result is a sublime hamburger fairly bursting with juices.

It’s 12 miles from our home in the 9th Ward to Zuppardo’s Supermarket in Metairie but we still make the trip a couple times per month to buy groceries. We drive by a dozen markets on the way out to Jefferson Parish and with good reason: the Zuppardo clan run a tight ship, sell a good product and also have one of New Orleans best diners tucked away in the corner of their grocery store.

They run daily blue plates that are fine but the real star of the show is the sandwiches including the best meatball po boy in southern Louisiana.

The prosperity doctrine of meat consumption runs full bore here as all po boys come stuffed to the rafters with everything from sausage to roast beef to city ham but we’re helpless under the sway of that damn hamburger. It’s the loosely-formed, mamaw-style patty that we love after years of eating from the table of elderly country women with names like Etta, Nelly and Hazel.

This is not a pub burger in that it’s reasonably petite, perhaps 5 to 5.5 ounces in heft. Dressed means mayo, mustard, lettuce, pickles, onions and tomatoes. Cheese is available upon request but is not necessary.

Zuppardo’s employs a host of middle-aged women as their line cooks and they’re some of the best in the business. Nobody is riding the beef patties with their spatula or taking any of the other shortcuts so commonplace in New Orleans.

Zuppardo’s started out as a vegetable stand in the 1930s. They had a long run in New Orleans proper til Katrina washed them out to the suburbs in 2005, and it doesn’t look like they’re coming home anytime soon.

At $3.17 for one of the best hamburgers in Louisiana we don’t need any other excuses to load up the Econoline and head west.

5010 Veterans Memorial Blvd

Metairie, LA

70006

Sunday 8:00 AM – 6:00 PM

Monday 8:00 AM – 8:00 PM

Tuesday 8:00 AM – 8:00 PM

Wednesday 8:00 AM – 8:00 PM

Thursday 8:00 AM – 8:00 PM

Friday 8:00 AM – 8:00 PM

Saturday 8:00 AM – 8:00 PM