In rocky times, Clown Burger is still open: ‘Thank you from the bottom of our heart.’
Clown Burger’s faithful customers were worried.
In a late-night stream-of-consciousness online post, the owner and grill cook wrote that she was worried about having to close the beloved 1959-style hamburger stand at 5010 Stanley Keller Road.
Never fear. The Clown is alive.
It’s endured 61 years of ever-climbing beef prices, City Hall struggles, family upheaval and now, a global pandemic.
“I was trying to thank our loyal customers for helping keep our doors open,” said Kari Snodgrass, fighting to keep Clown Burger from changing too much even as she upgrades and expands the menu.
A new bacon-barbecue cheeseburger with grilled onions joins last year’s addition, grilled jalapeños.
The Clown’s business is mostly takeout, so coronavirus closings didn’t hurt it much. But tight money and high beef prices did.
But Friday, the lines were back, and burgers required a 30-minute wait.
“We’ve seen quite a few new people,” Snodgrass said.
Word gets around.
“We have the best customers,” Snodgrass said.
Her anguished late-night Facebook post said recent weeks have been “uncertain, terrifying.”
“We have watched so many businesses close [ — ] long-standing, established businesses,” she wrote.
She had worried about the Clown closing “on my watch, because of a virus” after 61 years.
“Thank you from the bottom of our heart,” she wrote. “We are forever grateful.”
Never franchised, always original, the Clown guarantees that the burgers served today on the corner of Stanley Keller Road and Haltom Road are absolutely the same as the day it opened in 1959 at 5512 E. Belknap St.
It’s almost amazing to think that a burger grill that old hasn’t changed.
The burgers are made with old-time 1/6-pound patties, so a normal order is a double or triple cheeseburger.
There’s also foot-long chili dogs that taste they way they did in 1959.
Before McDonald’s, Jack-in-the-Box and Griff’s Burger Bar brought new clowns to town, this was our original Clown.
The old sign from Belknap stands today on Haltom Road.
Clown Burger is open for lunch Tuesdays through Saturdays; 817-298-1477, facebook.com/ClownBurger.
This story was originally published May 25, 2020 at 5:45 AM.
