Shake for me, babe

Unless you live in some amazingly well-air- conditioned palace and never go outdoors, you’ve probably noticed that the weather has started to pack some serious heat. It’s getting to be summer, and if you’re like me, pretty soon you’re going to want to find a nice shady place to drink milkshakes and talk trash with your homies. My current recommended locale for shakes and trash-talking is Scoopers Drive-In.

Scoopers is a perfect place if you’re looking to experience that classic American Graffiti, summer-evening-with-nothing- much-to-do-but-hang-out- in-your-car-and-eat vibe. You can order from your car, if you want, or you can eat in their dining room, or you can do like my friend Mark and I did: order at the counter and eat at their wooden picnic tables.

“It’s like camp!” said Mark.

“Yes,” I thought, “milkshake camp.”

We encountered the usual disadvantages to eating outside—napkins blowing in the wind—but we did get to enjoy the pleasant ambience of scenic Prater Way.

Scoopers proudly embraces the “fast food” label, which is not something that usually gets my motor running. But they’re friendly and locally-owned, so they provide a good alternative to national chains. And since they nail the American Graffiti mood without even really trying, they provide a good alterna- tive to expensive, themed casino restaurants.

And, importantly, the food is good. I had the “honcho” burger ($3.29), which adds tasty jalapeños to the basic burger accoutrements of lettuce, tomato and a sauce sort of in the key of 1000 Island.

“They must call it the ‘honcho’ because that sounds vaguely Spanish,” said Mark, “even though that means nothing in Spanish.” The burger was good, and, as is often said of good burgers, “juicy.”

Mark got the big “Al burger” combo with fries and a shake ($7.89). The “Al” is a three-quarter pound burger with three meat patties stacked tall and proud. Mark enjoyed it, even though it was apparently in violation of his normally strict dietary regulations. The fries were fairly run-of-the-mill but nice, if you’re into that kind of thing.

The shakes come in three sizes: small, large and super. The middle size (16 ounces, $2.79) is not called “medium,” and when I made the mistake of calling it thus, I was politely corrected. It is “large.” They don’t have any mediums at Scoopers.

They do have a good variety of flavors, and I went with an old standby: Oreo. It came garnished with a whole Oreo cookie, which was slightly difficult to retrieve from my cup. Mark opted for the odd flavor of lime. The lime taste was very subtle. Mark described it as “vanilla with a little citrus.”

But these are good shakes—well mixed, nice and thick, but you can still drink them with a straw, and you’re not left with an unsightly lump of ice cream when you’re done, either.

Besides being a nostalgic venue for hot-rodders looking to reenact scenes from ‘50s teenybopper culture, Scoopers is an actual hot spot for Sparks teen-agers, since it’s only a stone’s throw from Sparks High School. So, depending on how you feel about that information, you might want to steer clear during the lunch hour when school is back in session. I’d also recommend going early in the season, so as to avoid that wonderful part of the annual Truckee Meadows calendar when ‘50s drive-in nostalgia heats up to sickeningly ludicrous levels—in other words, get there before Hot August Nights.