Does a Jucy Lucy from the Matt's Bar food truck compare to the bar?

Yahoo

18-05-2025

In a cold, breezy Lakeville parking lot, the new food truck from Matt's Bar made its official debut on Saturday.
More than 25 people were already in line at 10:55 a.m., five minutes before the festival opened and an hour before most people would consider putting down a burger.
In a sense, the excitement showed that we all own Matt's Bar. In a more real sense, basically none of us do.
Still, when a place is such a beloved institution, there's a certain ownership felt by the community. That might most noticeably take the form of defending its honor from detractors and decrying the grinding gears of capitalism that can change the way things are supposed to be done in the hallowed ground of a dive bar.
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So, when Matt's Bar announced it would open a food truck, the news was met with a mix of elation and trepidation from the very unrepresentative sample of people I personally talked to and from commentary online.
The consensus seemed to be that having easier access to a Jucy Lucy is unequivocally a good thing. However, the truck is bright and shiny (decidedly un-Matt's Bar), and its kitchen isn't old enough to collect social security, which seems to be an important piece of the Matt's Bar recipe for fans.
"Respectfully, is it still really a Matt's Jucy Lucy if it's not cooked on the same back bar griddle that has decades of seasoning on it?" one commenter wrote on Bring Me The News' Facebook page.
While the bar obviously hasn't had the same griddle since the Eisenhower administration, there's a belief that the taste of a Jucy Lucy is tied to being in that corner bar with the red awning.
So, I trekked out to the Lakeville Food Truck Fest to see if a truck can recreate that magic alchemy.
It was quickly apparent that despite the truck's newness, it was channeling a dive bar on wheels. The menu features a $15 Jucy Lucy with the option to add fries for $3. (That's $4.50 more than a Jucy Lucy in the bar.)
That's it.
Like the menu, the burger remains unfussy. Add onions and pickles if you want, but that's the only alteration available. The burger is dropped into a paper tray, and your number is called out through a speaker. You've been served.
Naturally, I burned my mouth on the first bite, which helps it feel like I'm truly eating at Matt's Bar.
Maybe I'm projecting the belief that there's some magic je ne sais quoi behind the bar — the food truck and the restaurant were a 30-minute drive from one another on Saturday, preventing a true side-by-side taste test — but the burger and onions arrive a little less greasy than what is served at the bar. Maybe that's a result of a fresh kitchen and arriving right around the time the griddle is fired up for the day. Maybe it's my imagination.
I've eaten a lot of Jucy/Juicy Lucys, and it's hard to talk about what makes a good one without talking about what makes a bad one.
Having experience in the kitchen matters. You can't specify the cook you want on most because it requires a balance between getting the cheese properly melted and not overcooking the meat.
There's also the issue of cheese distribution. It needs to be spread around the inside of the patty and not just packed in the middle. Each bite needs access to some cheese. Though, not too much or too little.
Matt's Bar not only has a claim on being an original, but it's one of the best around because it nails all these things. The burgers have char but aren't dry. The cheese and meat strike a friendly balance.
With so many years of practice, it shouldn't be surprising that the truck delivers the same burger fans have ordered for decades on Cedar Avenue.
Even if there's a different feel to eating a Jucy Lucy outside, and I wondered about some subtle differences, it's unmistakably a Matt's Bar burger. You get a nicely cooked Lucy on a mediocre bun delivered with no fanfare. It's just right.