As seen on YouTube

Black Hills Burger and Bun (BHB&B) has become the latest Custer restaurant to receive some free publicity on YouTube, and its sister store, Wild Spruce Market, has been spotlighted as well.
Less than a month after “Midwest Food Stories” published a 12 minute video about Skogen Kitchen, the site posted a profile of BHB&B and the natural food market owned by Claude and Christie Smith Nov. 2.
The seven minute video features interviews with the Smiths and their daughter Jessica Hartmann and shows scenes of Claude cooking burgers on the griddle.
“We really liked it,” said Claude of the video. “We thought the guy did a really good job on it.”
The video describes the Smiths journey from running a grocery store in Iowa to owning one of the most popular restaurants in the Black Hills.
“We’re not typical restaurateurs,” said Claude. “We haven’t worked our way through different restaurants through the years. We just kind of figured it out, I guess, as we went.”
Growing up in his parents’ grocery store in the central Iowa town of Nevada, Claude said he got introduced to the restaurant business through the store’s deli. He explained that many grocery stores in Iowa and even East River South Dakota have grills and serve burgers, brats and steak sandwiches at lunchtime on different days of the week.
However, it was the grocery business that first brought the Smiths to Custer in the early 2000s.
“We had vacationed out here in the Hills and we loved the Black Hills,” explained Claude.
On a trip to the Hills the couple noticed the Custer County Market at the corner of 5th Street and Mt. Rushmore Road was for sale. After looking at the store they saw the potential and bought it.  
“It was just exactly what we wanted to do,” said Claude. “We wanted to be more hands-on and go back to doing most everything ourselves again.”
During their tenure at the store, the Smiths brought in more natural foods and bought out the inventory of the former Dragonfly Market health food store.
After several years, they received an offer for the store and decided to sell it in 2010.
“We moved back to Iowa for a year and we missed the Hills,” said Claude. “You don’t realize it sometimes until after you leave.”
They say it took a while but the Smiths moved back to Custer in 2012 and opened BHB&B at 29 N. 5th Street. Several years later the restaurant moved to its current location around the corner on Mt. Rushmore Road.
The video features the plastic green gingham plaid plate that is used to flatten every burger that goes on the grill. Claude speaks in almost reverent tones about that particular plate he has used since the first year of opening the restaurant.
“I would be lost if I didn’t have that,” he told me. “I don’t know what I’d do. We always joke around about it. When we get a new dishwasher I tell them don’t break my plate!”
The video also describes the development of one of the most popular of the restaurant’s signature burgers, the Hot Granny. Claude says his mother was the inventor of the sandwich, which is based on her popular grilled jalapeno poppers  made with hot peppers, cream cheese and bacon.
The Smiths perfected the recipe themselves and worked hard at developing the sandwich’s special sauce. It had to strike a balance between spicy and sweet.
“We looked at a lot of different recipes and came up with a cross between a jelly and a sauce,” said Claude.  
He said Christie finalized the recipe in the kitchen of their little rented house the very night before they opened.
The sauce became so popular they started to can it in glass jars and sell it in the restaurant but then in 2020 they started having trouble getting the pint jars because of the now-familiar supply chain issues.
They managed to get hold of some different sized jars last spring and sold them out by August.
Brad Iwen, the producer of the video, said the production has been in the hopper for several years.
“I first discovered BHB&B in 2013 when they were in their old location,” he said. “We were staying near Custer and we loved the burgers so much, we ate there three times that week. I’ve followed their success over the years and have wanted to do a ‘Midwest Food Story’ on them for some time now.”
Iwen said elements of the Smiths story that were compelling to him were their move from Iowa because of their love for the Hills, the quality of their product, their grocery store roots and the opening of a specialty foods market in Custer and how the family continues to be the driving force behind the success of their brand.
“I have tried most of the items on the menu,” said Iwen. “I love the Hot Granny, the Fat Smitty, the State Fair Fritter, the curds, the fried pickles and the fried green tomatoes. My kids love the shakes, of course, and I’ve also had an amazing salad there.”
Like many such businesses, because of the current lack of people in the workforce, BHB&B is having to cut back its hours this winter. At this time and probably until spring, the restaurant is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
The “Midwest Food Stories” video can be viewed by visiting the My Black Hills Country website.