Nowra readers might be amused to hear that takeaway chains like KFC are apologising to customers for using cabbage on burgers due to a lettuce shortage.
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While the humble cabbage is finally having its moment in the sun, "lettuce" not forget that in days of old, the main street of Nowra was fragrant with the wafting smells of hamburgers cooking; hamburgers only ever dressed with cabbage.
For many years, Alice Baxter, her hair wrapped in a scarf, was a fixture at her servery window that opened out onto Junction Street from a strategic location near the Prince of Wales Hotel.
A couple of generations later, Alice, her hamburgers, and her use of cabbage instead of lettuce can still spark passionate conversations in Nowra, which always end up at the same conclusion - no one has ever tasted burgers like them.
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The cabbage is one thing, but it's the recipe for Alice's secret hamburger sauce that never fails to produce the fiercest debate, speculation and argument.
It was said the sauce recipe was sold with the shop. When local businessman Dick Hall purchased the outlet, he continued to guard the ingredients closely.
Adrian Morgan last year posted a grainy picture from a WIN TV bulletin of the "hamburger window" on his facebook site, Shoalhaven in the 20th Century - a post which elicited 285 comments.
It seems everyone has a story and a memory of Alice's hamburgers.
Readers fondly remember a hard working and friendly Alice and the ever present smell of burgers, onions and cabbage sizzling on the hot plate, a smell that was part of the landscape of Junction Street.
In the days before kebabs came to Nowra it's also clear that Alice's burgers were the go-to sustenance needed before, during or after a pub crawl.
But it's not long before the comments turn to the mystery of that sauce and the exact ingredients that made the burgers taste so special.
Was it brown sauce, or brown sauce with white sauce? Did it have peanut butter in it, or was the secret kick from "parisian essence"?
Maybe we'll never know all Alice's secrets, but with lettuce prices at a premium, we could all soon be taking a leaf out of her cook book when it comes to cabbage!
If you have any photos of the old hamburger shop, or any information to share, send to kathy.sharpe@austcommunitymedia.com.au
