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Balls

4343 W. Northwest #300 214.352.2525 facebook.com/ballshamburgers

Ken Nelson started eating at Balls Hamburgers when his daughter was 3. She’s now 30.

The original Snider Plaza location “was kind of a hangout for little kids because they had a couple of pinball machines,” Nelson says.

When his daughter played elementary and junior high soccer, and later joined the drill team, Balls was the place to celebrate and hold award ceremonies.

“We’d put a lot of tables together and have a banquet,” Nelson says.

The Snider Plaza location has closed, but Nelson still eats at the Northwest Highway-Midway location two or three times a week. He heads there after working out at the Town North YMCA, usually when the lunch rush has died down.

Sometimes Nelson’s wife joins him. They have a special drink — a Diet Coke with a splash of Dr Pepper. They like Diet Dr Pepper, but the soda fountain has a limited number of options, and the rare Mello Yello beats out the more mainstream Diet Dr Pepper.

The staff knows their preferred drink; Nelson and his wife don’t have to ask for it. He wondered whether it might be a common request.

“I said, ‘Oh, are there a lot of us people like that?’ And they said, ‘No.’ ” Balls doesn’t have much employee turnover, Nelson says. He knew owner Barry Hobrecht, who died suddenly in 2009, and knows most of the current staff, too.

“It’s kind of like ‘Cheers,’ when you walk in and they say, ‘Norm!’ he says. “I find a place I like and just don’t try others because I’m not one to try a lot a new stuff. I kind of like to go where I like to go.”

Customers like Nelson are not unusual, says employee Christopher Ornelas. A lot of professionals dine at Balls two or three times a week. A guy named Larry comes in for lunch then brings his family for dinner, order like a regular

When Nelson wants something healthy, he orders the chicken sandwich or the ace plate — a salad with lettuce, tomato, onion and grilled chicken breast. “That way you don’t have the bun,” he says. When his wife is traveling on business, Nelson will stop in for lunch to order a burger with sweet potato fries, eat half, and then take the rest home for dinner.

Ornelas’ usual order is a burger with mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, tomatoes, pickles, jalapeños and pepper jack cheese. “Sometimes I put bacon on it,” he says. He chooses between the cheese fries, tater tots and onion rings as a side.

Ornelas says. Another guy, Mike, routinely calls in an order for two chocolate milkshakes.

“He always has exact change” when he pays, Ornelas says.

Ornelas, 26, was a regular before he was an employee. His grandparents began bringing him to Balls when he was 6.

“For as long as I can remember, this is what I think about when I think about burgers,” Ornelas says.

They would come on Sundays after church and order a burger for $3.95. (Now it’s $5.95.) His grandfather has since died, and his grandmother still dines at Balls once or twice a month, but not nearly as often as she used to “because it reminds her of him,” Ornelas says.

The W.T. White graduate began working part-time at the restaurant when he was 16. He joined the military after high school, and then started working at Balls again when he came home.

“Those cooks haven’t changed since I was a kid,” he says. Neither has the sports memorabilia along the walls or the chalkboards that advertise the menu items. Ornelas points to the “new” chalkboard, the one posted a couple of years ago that displays more recent menu additions — sweet potato fries, tater tots, shrimp tacos and cherry limeades.

But most people, including him, stick with the classic that has kept Balls in business since 1987 — their hamburgers.

That’s the reason people come back, Ornelas says. That, and because “it feels like home.”