By Patricia Summerfield
November 19, 2009
For lunch I decided to go to Kroll’s, one of Green Bay’s original restaurants, for their signature hamburgers and chili. I went to Kroll’s West which is located directly across the street from the famous Lambeau Field. There is also a Kroll’s on the east side which is the original restaurant from 1936; the restaurant on the west side opened in 1974. Kroll’s West offers a large full bar with many booths to the right. 
As you walk in, it's in a separate room and the lighting is dimmer. The main part of the restaurant is towards the back and has counter seating which faces the kitchen. The center area has unique large cream colored booths with high backs and a few dark green chairs added in front for extra seating. Along the sides of the room are the medium sized booths for smaller groups. The restaurant has a casual comfy atmosphere with bright lighting and is very clean. On one side of the wall is a glass enclosed case with different football and Packer memorabilia and there are a few TV screens placed above the bar area and main dining room.
All the booths are stocked with extra napkins, ketchup, salt and pepper, and their laminated menus. A feature quite unique to Kroll’s is that each booth alongside the wall has a silver buzzer you press when you are ready to give your order, and the servers are always pretty fast at responding. You will be waited on by one server while a different server brings out your order. The food is always brought out on a tray and you will be asked what you ordered and then they promptly put your food down in front of you. I ordered a bowl of chili with spaghetti and beans for $4.75, a double hamburger with everything for $5.75, a Sea Burger for $4.90, a large side of onion rings for $5.25, and a can of soda for $1.75. I asked for my chili to be brought out first and it came immediately with 2 packs of oyster crackers. The chili tasted as delicious as it always has over the past 50 years; mildly spicy and sweet with a hint of cocoa in it. My sandwiches came next, now another tradition which has not changed is that all their hamburgers and sea burgers are wrapped in 2 pieces of white paper and you eat the sandwiches right off the paper. On my sandwiches I ordered everything. For the hamburger, that includes onions, butter, ketchup and pickles. For my sea burger everything consists of tartar sauce, pickles, butter but no ketchup for me. The key ingredient for the burgers is the butter on the patty, especially when it is all nice and melted on top, that’s what puts the seal on it. My sea burger was luscious tasting. The fried haddock topped with the homemade tartar sauce, onions and dill pickles combined with the melting butter, which was dripping over my fingers as I bit into my crunchy white hard roll, is so simple, yet, oh so good. I was a little disappointed in my charcoal broiled hamburger, for the butter on 
my patty was just sitting there cold and unmelted. Now, a true connoisseur of the Kroll’s hamburger knows that as you unwrap your burger it should be oozing with melting butter and ketchup.
I did point out the problem to a passing server and she offered to microwave it but I think that would have made the toasted bun soft. I enjoyed the burger anyway. The onion rings tasted good, they were browned and crispy. It's nice to see the traditions of Kroll’s, that makes it their own, have not changed. It always brings back fond memories of my younger days.
