This Meridian drive-in restaurant made famous by Clint Eastwood is set to close
The Bronco Billy Burger will soon go off the menu at the Hungry Onion.
Named for Clint Eastwood’s character in the 1980 movie, the burger — which Bronco Billy ate when he stopped there — is getting retired along with the drive-in restaurant itself.
Eastwood portrayed Bronco Billy McCoy, a cowboy who heads a struggling Wild West show while trying to rescue a stranded Park Avenue heiress portrayed by Sandra Locke.
The Hungry Onion, which opened in 1963, once featured locations in Meridian, Garden City, Nampa and Mountain Home. Now its last surviving restaurant, the one in downtown Meridian, will shut down Dec. 31.
Manager Brooke Robbins said competition from national chains, which can offer burgers for less money than the family-owned Hungry Onion, and a one-way street that diverts southbound traffic onto other streets doomed the drive-in at 334 N. Main St. The traffic diversion, intended in part to take through traffic off Main Street downtown, opened six years ago.
Meridian resident Shelly Houston on Thursday posted on Facebook that the venerable burger joint was closing. By Monday afternoon, her post had been shared nearly 1,000 times and garnered nearly 300 comments.
“We’re sad to hear you’re going,” Nampa resident Gene Peters, who pulled in Monday morning in for a burger and fries with his wife, Jamie, told Robbins.
“We are, too,” Robbins replied.
On her post, Houston said she recalled fondly going to the Hungry Onion as a child “for softie ice cream cones (if we behaved).”
Peters, retired from working at Hewlett-Packard in Boise, used to live in Meridian. He said he’s been coming to the Hungry Onion since the 1970s.
“The food here is awesome, the same as when I first came here,” Peters said. “They’re old-school: The waitresses come out and take your order and then bring the food to you. It’s one of the very few left.”
Since word of the closure spread, the Hungry Onion has been “crazy busy,” Robbins said. By 11:15 a.m. Monday, the parking lot was full and other customers walked to the front window.
“It’s another landmark that’s biting the dust,” Meridian resident Larry Topping said.
He came in for the Big Hungry Burger — a quarter-pound of beef, ham and cheese — and an order of deep-fried zucchini, a Hungry Onion specialty.
And what about the Bronco Billy Burger, which isn’t listed on the wooden menu board attached to the outside wall?
The $6.20 quarter-pound burger with bacon, cheese and barbecue sauce served on a hoagie roll is on a secret menu. You have to ask for it.
“We sell a lot of those,” Robbins said. “It’s no secret.”
