Late at night, when the liquor stores and factories on Holabird Avenue are quiet, light still shines from a little restaurant with green-and-white awnings.
Inside, as a handful of customers watch from high stools, a burly man molds balls of pink ground beef, arranges them in neat rows on a grill and sprinkles on a crown of finely chopped onions. Then he presses the hissing burgers flat with a spatula until white steam rises from the meat.
"This is how it's always been done," says Steven Rich, 50, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of one thick-fingered hand. Off and on for 13 years, he has cooked burgers for the truckers, dancers, drunks and lonely travelers who turn up late at this Little Tavern restaurant in Southeast Baltimore.
Once, the pint-sized restaurants seemed ubiquitous in this area, plopped down in the middle of city blocks. In the 1950s, about 40 of the restaurants were open in the Baltimore-Washington area, selling tiny burgers in white paper sacks.
But one by one, the Little Taverns have shut their doors. Now, only this one remains - for the time being. The property on which the restaurant sits recently changed hands, and the owner says problems with his health may force him to close.
For now though, the last Little Tavern stays open around the clock. Cooks serve up fried eggs and hash browns, coffee or sweet tea in foam cups and the famous burgers, which fit easily into a child's palm. Customers, many of whom remember the days when the burgers cost a dime, come to relive old memories as much as to satisfy a craving.
"Whenever we're over here, we make it a point to stop by," says Ed Adkins, 72, a retired financial adviser from Catonsville, clutching a sack of a dozen burgers to share with his wife. "The colors, the lighting, the name out front - it brings back pleasant memories."
Even younger customers say that nostalgia draws them. "It's historical," says Jessica Johnson, 23, of Sparrows Point, as she picks up a bag of six on her way back to work at Provident Bank. "My parents used to take me here when I was little. And I just like the taste of the meat better."
The burgers, served on rolls from H&S Bakery, with a pickle, mustard and ketchup, sell for 85 cents each - a little extra for lettuce, tomato or cheese.
The cooks who work the day shift, Carolyn Sprecher, 51, and Pamela Locklear, 37, say that they put food on the grill for regular customers as soon as their cars pull into the parking lot.
