El Reno is a town of about 16,000 people on Historic Route 66 in Canadian County, about 30 miles west of Oklahoma City. It is famous for one thing above all: the onion-fried burger. Several restaurants in town claim to serve the original version — thin beef patties smashed into a mound of shredded onions on a flat-top grill — but Sid's Diner and Robert's Grill are the two names most often cited. Each May, the Fried Onion Burger Day Festival draws thousands to downtown for a cook-off and what organizers claim is the world's largest fried onion burger.
El Reno has deeper history than the burgers suggest. Fort Reno, just west of town, was established in 1874 during the Indian Wars and later served as a prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. The site is now a USDA research station, but the old cavalry-era buildings and cemetery are open to visitors and worth a walk-through. The Canadian County Historical Museum downtown covers the Land Run era and the Cheyenne and Arapaho heritage of the area, and the 1904 Carnegie Library on Bickford Avenue is the oldest of its kind in Oklahoma.
As a Route 66 stop, El Reno has an appealing honesty to it -- a real town with a real specialty, not a themed tourist trap. If you are driving the Mother Road through Oklahoma, this is where you eat lunch.