From local and regional favorites and food trucks, the National Hamburger Festival was the place to be for burger lovers in downtown Akron this weekend.
Thousands bought burgers of all kinds along South Main Street near Lock 3 on Saturday and Sunday.
And burger cookers, and eaters, came from all over Northeast Ohio and beyond. Dave Jackson, his wife Sharon and son Aaron came from Youngstown.
"I had the bourbon burger with onions and cajun sauce on it, very good," Jackson told AkronNewsNow between bites.
Jackson says his son was the one who really wanted to go this year.
"My son loves hamburgers", Jackson says, "and we told him that there was a hamburger festival, and he just had to have that this summer."
Vicky Coffield and her husband Tim from Columbia Station have been trying to attend for years.
"Burgers are my favorite, that's my favorite food," Coffield tells AkronNewsNow, "so we've been trying to get here for seven years and we finally made it."
Food trucks did well at the National Hamburger Festival. Kelly Waddell owns "The Nosh Box" out of the Cleveland area, and he was happy about the demand.
"We'll try it again next year," Waddell says, "we doubled sales this year, we hope to triple next year...it's going great, we love it."
Waddell says the "Birdie Burger" was, well, flying out the window of his food truck into the hands of eager diners.
After some consideration, our personal choice was the "Johnny Appleseed" burger from Steel Trolley Diner, a restaurant really in a diner car in the Columbiana County town of Lisbon. The burger had shredded cheddar cheese and "apple pie jam" on top.
But on the way out, we took pictures of burgers on the grill...prompting John from Akron burger standby Menches Brothers to offer a free sample off their grill. (John didn't realize who was getting the sample.) The Menches family claims to have invented the hamburger in 1885.
The sample didn't "change our outlook on the hamburger forever", as John noted, at least not yet...but it was the perfect burger treat on the way to the car.
