I've driven some embarrassing distances for a good hamburger. Once, three hours each way through a thunderstorm, on the strength of a single sentence I'd read about a place. So when I tell you that Family Destinations Guide flagged Hank's Drive-In in Fairlawn, Virginia as a spot worth the miles, understand that I take that claim seriously.

The write-up doesn't give you much: Hank's is a drive-in in Fairlawn, and it has gained a reputation for its delicious burgers. That's the whole pitch, and I mean it as a compliment, because a drive-in that becomes known for its burgers, specifically its burgers, is usually a place that figured out the most important thing first.

A short menu is usually a better menu, and I'll stand by that. A handful of things done well beats twenty things done medium, every time. A drive-in with a burger reputation is the purest version of that idea: people aren't coming for the ambiance or a cocktail program, they're coming because the burger earned the drive.

What makes drive-in burgers work in general is the same thing that made early fast food work, and I wrote about this recently with the whole McDonald's history deep-dive: repetition, fresh ingredients, and people doing one thing so many times they stop thinking about it. You can't fake that kind of muscle memory. It's why the burger from a roadside spot keeps beating the one from the fancy place with the brioche bun and the short-rib blend. The roadside burger has nothing to prove.

The drive-in format itself is part of the experience, too. Eating in or near your car, wax paper everywhere, that first scalding bite taken too fast because you couldn't wait. I've burned the roof of my mouth on more burgers than I care to admit and I regret exactly none of them. And southwestern Virginia in the fall is one of the prettier corners of the state to burn your mouth in, all those ridgelines going gold, so the drive doubles as the appetizer.

If you're planning a trip around it, call ahead or check their hours before you commit the miles, since I haven't been yet and I'd hate for you to roll up on a Tuesday to find a closed sign. I'll be honest about where things stand: this one's on my list, not in my stomach. Yet.

Every place has something, and sometimes that something is just a burger so good people talk about it enough that it ends up on a list like this. Would you make the drive? Because I'm already checking my calendar.