The price of fame

In last Saturday's Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition, veteran food reporter Raymond Sokolov bestowed the grand title on an eight-stool restaurant called Ann's Snack Bar. It serves the "World Famous Ghetto Burger". After eating dozens of hamburgers coast to coast and everywhere in between, Ann was declared the best. Since then, owner Ann Price has been besieged with business at her ramshackle, blink-and-you'll-miss-it, 35-year-old joint in Atlanta.

"It's driving me nuts down here!" Price, 63, bellowed from behind the counter where a dozen or more of her iconic double-pattie creations sizzled on the flattop grill, reddened with seasoning salt and draped in yellow cheese. "I don't have the space!"

"Miss Ann," as loyal regulars call her, prefers to work less like a short-order cook and more like an itamae-san at a sushi counter — crafting each burger sequentially, starting with a mound of loose meat cupped in her palm. She carves slivers from a whole onion over the burger as if she were peeling a potato. She crisps bacon in the deep-fat fryer, toasts the bun on the griddle and hand-spreads thin veneers of every known condiment. Sokolov termed the results a "masterpiece" and "the next level of burgerhood."