DIRTY MARTIN’SKUM-BAKBURGERS

80 years old and still a player... why?

Who, What, When, Where, and Why — the Holy Grail of good reporting. But it seems, these days, we never get the “Why” from anyone in the media. So I decided to make the focus of this restaurant feature about an eighty-year old Austin institution, all about the Why. Bear with me…it’s a really good story.

When John Martin first opened his Kum- Bak Restaurant in 1926, it wasn’t just another neighborhood diner serving burgers and shakes with buggy and car-hop service, it was the ONLY one…in the Country! It was a little place adjoining a gas station, with a dirt floor, eight bar stools, and a small drive-through. The “dirt floor” would eventually be responsible for the Kum-Bak’s nickname of “Dirty Martin’s”, coined by the soldiers returning from WWII who hung out at the restaurant and bar next door — previously the gas station. Though a concrete floor was added in 1951, the nickname stuck and was later adopted by the owner, himself.

Through the 1940s and 1950s, most of the restaurant’s business was done in the parking lot. But in the mid-‘60s, to accommodate the growing number of patrons who wanted to come in from the heat, the wall between the diner and bar was removed to create the back dining room that exists today.

So that’s the story of the building, but what about the food?… and the reason, on any given day, you’re likely to find four generations of customers who either grew up eating at this place or are currently growing up in this place. Well, I decided to ask them — all of them. After downing a surprisingly tender and juicy, Grilled Chicken Sandwich (since I don’t normally eat beef) and a side order of Chili (which was frankly, quite delicious), I began to make my way through the restaurant, sitting and chatting with anyone who’d indulge me, all in the name of good journalism and finding the answer to the Why. And for the most part, they were happy to tell me. “This place never changes… you know exactly what you’re going to get”… “I get cravings for their greasy hamburgers and I’ve been coming here since I was a kid”… “My grandma brings me here ‘cause I like the strawberry shakes and chili fries”… “We enjoy sitting at the counter and watching the cooks flip the burgers”… “I usually order a basket of onion rings (note: they’re enormous) and I’m a happy guy”… “My parents used to bring me here when I was a kid and I guess I’ll probably bring my kids here too”… “I’ve never been here before but my sister always talks about it”… “The funky atmosphere is kinda nice ‘cause it’s not corporate”… “I love the food here, have you tried it?”

After thirty minutes of these kinds of comments from clearly loyal customers, I decided to talk with the manager as well. A fairly young woman, who’s worked at the restaurant for nearly five years, she told me that most of the cooks had been there for seven to twenty years (unheard of in your average diner). She also told me about a waitress named Margie, who retired in 2003 at the age of 80. And Doc Mallard, who started working at Dirty Martin’s in 1947 as a car-hop and was the Head of Public Relations, until his death in 1993. Wesley Hughes, who started as a cook 50 years ago, is still employed as the current P.R. man. These are people who devoted most of their adult life to a place that became a second home for them, not unlike the customers I had spoken with.

These days, you can catch a game on the big screen that’s been installed in a new outdoor patio (you might even run into a famous ex-player or coach), but the food is still the same — the quality meat they use in their burgers and chili is never frozen, and everything is made fresh daily. One customer told me that the first time he came to Dirty Martin’s, an employee opened the door to welcome him in and it made a lasting impression. The answer to the “Why” has become clear to me while doing this story. We all want to feel welcome and satisfied when we go out to eat and spend our money on that muchanticipated meal. And if we know we’re going to have a food experience we can count on, in a friendly and familiar place, all the better. It’s human nature. In the modern world where most things seem to change on an almost weekly basis, we just want, and even need, some things to stay the same.

Dirty Martin’s Kum-Bak Burgers is located at 2808 Guadalupe and is Open Daily from 11am–11pm. 512-477-3173 (Note: If you pull your car under the metal awning and turn your lights on, you can still get car-hop service.)