by Tim Girton
Ville Voice Eats Corresondent

How do you remember the cheeseburger? Is it as one of those mama burgers filled with onions, bell peppers and all the other ingredients that mothers loved and you couldn’t stand? I remember telling my mother point-blank that the restaurants don’t serve them that way. Mom always insisted that hers were better but my regurgitive reflex seemed to disagree every time.

Or would it be from the voices of John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd and Bill Murray? Chee-boiga, chee-boiga, chee-boiga. That skit became firmly ingrained in the American consciousness in the 70s and early 80s.

Or would it be the purported “Birthplace of the Cheeseburger?” Kaelin’s Restaurant, 1801 Newburg Road, at the corner of Newburg Road and Speed Avenue? It lays claim to that title and has a complete history on how it was created.

At least two other restaurants say they were first, including Pasadena’s Rite Spot, where a 16-year-old Lionel Sternburger was said to have put cheese on a regular hamburger and called it a cheese hamburger, and Denver’s Humpty Dumpty Barrrel Drive-In, which trademarked the name “cheeseburger” a year after Kaelin’s introduced it by name on its menu. Both of those other “creators” have since gone belly up.

Back in March, Kaelin’s closed for renovations. A few days later the awful truth started to creep in. Now it’s June and Kaelin’s website no longer exists. The phone is disconnected. It seems that we’ve lost an historic Louisville institution.

My own personal experiences with Kaelin’s revolved around the cheeseburger. Sure they served other food, including fried green tomatoes, biscuit pudding and the like, but nothing matched the cheeseburger platter with fries and cole slaw. My wife and I frequented the restaurant in recent years because we were tired of waving (the famed sign, “If you Can’t Stop, Please Wave, is still there) so we stopped often. She would try various items on the menu, but for me it was cheeseburgers or nothing. It felt like consuming manna from the source.

And now, we are mourning the Holy Grail of Louisville food creativity. I mean, the hamburger didn’t NEED cheese, but Kaelin’s created a culinary masterpiece as well as an American icon. No, we didn’t need it, but boy, did we sure want it.

Here’s hoping that it comes back.