Our protagonist nervously steps up to the service counter at the Honker Burger, a fuchsia and Cadillac pink fast-food joint, and attempts to order lunch for his family.

To his disbelief, the young woman working the register can’t understand him. Luckily, a blue-green preteen with an adenoidal voice translates his order of double cheeseburgers, fries and grape sodas into Honker-ese: “The new kid wants three moo cows, one no cukes, one no sneakers, one wet one, four tubers, and four from the vine.” ⇒

This exchange, taking place during the first season of the early-’90s Nickelodeon cartoon “Doug,” would be the beginning of a beautiful friendship between Doug Funnie and his new best friend Skeeter Valentine. The episode, “Doug Bags a Neematoad,” is the first to show the Honker Burger, the favored hangout of the show’s characters.

As many a Richmond millennial knows, “Doug” was based on show creator Jim Jinkins’ upbringing in the River City: the now-demolished Cloverleaf Mall in Chesterfield became the cartoon Four-Leaf Clover Mall; Henrico’s Moody Middle School inspired the Moody School for the Gifted, which Doug’s dramatic sister Judy attended; the show’s strange obsession with beets was a riff on Virginia’s cash crop of tobacco.

And the Honker Burger? Inspired by the Richmond location of Kelly’s Jet System Hamburgers, a long-defunct chain of hamburger stands. The Kelly’s of Jinkins’ youth was a mid-century Googie marvel located at what is now 1300 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd. Modern-day Richmonders may know this as the address of another beloved eatery: Boulevard Burger & Brew.

Yes, Virginia, the Honker Burger lives on.

And now that Boulevard Burger has completed a major renovation, following an October car crash that forced it to shut its doors, you can order as many “moo cows” at the Honker Burger as your heart desires.

Jim Jinkins is thrilled to learn that the Honker Burger still exists.

“You blew my mind with that picture of the façade,” he says after looking up Boulevard Burger online. “There it is. That’s exactly the place I recall.”

Reached by phone at his home in the mountains of western North Carolina, Jinkins says he’s tickled by how many millennials are still obsessed with a cartoon he created more than three decades ago.

As evidenced by the book “Slimed!: An Oral History of Nickelodeon’s Golden Age,” the documentary “The Orange Years” and the podcast “Splat Attack,” nostalgia for the ’90s-era of Nickelodeon programming has only grown in recent years. At Halloween parties, you’ll still run into the occasional Quailman, Doug’s superhero alter ego who wore his underpants on the outside. To this day, Jinkins says he’s stopped by millennials when he wears his “Doug” baseball cap.

Not bad for an unassuming 11-and-a-half-year-old with an overactive imagination.

“He’s sort of painfully average,” says Jinkins of his best-known character. “He’s left-handed and feels like he’s out in left field. He is a good listener, a good observer, a budding artist, but a lot of who he is and what he is has yet to be discovered.”

Growing up off Woodman Road in Henrico’s Lakeside suburb, Jinkins says his family rarely went out to eat. Kelly’s was one of the few places they frequented.

“It was always a treat,” he says. “We thought a chocolate milkshake from Kelly’s was a dream.”

According to Richmond Magazine, the space was originally built as a Sealtest Ice Cream location before Kelly’s opened there in 1958. Launched in the era of the Mercury missions, Kelly’s “Jet Flame System Hamburgers” were an effort to capitalize on space race fever.

While the futurist architecture of Kelly’s motivated the look of the Honker Burger, there were other local inspirations as well. Roy’s Big Burger in Lakeside [still there and flipping] and Bill’s Barbecue on Boulevard also fed into the creation of the Honker Burger; Roy’s was much closer to Jinkins’ childhood home than Bill’s or Kelly’s.

Shoney’s Big Boy was also a reference point.

“Shoney’s over near Willow Lawn really defined in that ‘American Graffiti’ kind of way a place that people met on dates, or was a good rendezvous place,” Jinkins says.

In creating the “Doug” universe, Jinkins wanted to make sure the characters had a meeting point they could visit on foot.

“The Honker Burger is a place you can walk to,” he says. “You don’t need to drive. It’s a place that is hyperlocal.”

As for the jargon of ordering at the Honker Burger, which brings to mind the secret menu of In-N-Out Burger, Jinkins says it was inspired by the lingo of diner waitresses.

“That language was fascinating to me as a kid,” he says. “I thought it was so cool that they had ways of saying things that sound silly if you’re not working there.”

Chris Tsui has a sense of humor about one of his restaurants being shuttered for months. On Oct. 11, 2024, a driver crashed into Boulevard Burger & Brew, forcing the eatery to shutter.

“Somebody decided to make it a drive-thru,” jokes the founder and president of EAT Restaurant Partners, a restaurant group that includes Osaka Sushi & Steak, Fat Dragon, Wild Ginger, Wong Gonzalez, and Pizza & Beer of Richmond among its offerings (Full disclosure: this reporter was part of the opening staff of Fat Dragon in 2012-2013).

The decision to create Boulevard Burger, which opened for business in early 2016, was inspired by the location’s previous use as a burger joint. After Kelly’s closed, Tsui says, the building housed a sub shop, then a used car dealership.  By the time EAT Restaurant Partners got involved, the structure had been vacant for years.

To create Boulevard Burger, Tsui and his crew decided to do a historic renovation and bring the building back to what it once looked like. And the burger business was booming … at least until the car crash.

“It was a DUI driver,” says Tsui, who was Virginia Commonwealth University’s commencement speaker this past December. “She pretty much went through the front, tore up the concrete, the railing, went through the front glass.”

EAT Restaurant Partners has used this down time to expand the business’ footprint. The renovation has enclosed part of the existing patio, increased the size of the outdoor patio, added a walkup window where customers can purchase burgers and shakes, and rebranded an existing interior space as The Milkshake Room.

“The reason it’s taking so long is that they had to custom-make all that glass and frame,” says Tsui of the months-long renovation.

Referencing their fast food lineage, one of Boulevard’s bestselling offerings is the Kelly’s Classic, a straightforward burger with American cheese on a brioche bun.

Any chance they’d add a Honker Burger to the menu?

“We maybe could,” says Tsui, who was unaware of the “Doug” connection. “Our menu is kind of set already.”

Burgers are far from the only food fixation in “Doug.”

In the same episode that introduces the Honker Burger, Doug is surprised to learn that everyone in Bluffington, the town he just moved to, loves beets.

“Why they’re nature’s candy, don’t you know?” says Skeeter before lobbing a disc of the purple root vegetable in his mouth at the Honker Burger.

In his youth, Jinkins and his family grew beets on a 1.5-acre garden plot.

“I hated them. I hated when my mom would take them and make whatever you make out of beets. I wanted to die,” he says, adding that he got a kick out of turning them into an obsession for the characters of the animated world he created. “Like Popeye had spinach, this is a world where beets are something special.”

There was also The Beets, a fictional band that smashed together the look, lore and sound of The Rolling Stones, The Who and The Beatles. The band’s music was created and performed by show composers Dan Sawyer and Fred Newman; Newman also voiced Skeeter and did the show’s sound effects.

The band’s best-known song, “Killer Tofu,” was penned by Alan Silberberg, an early writer on the show. Jinkins found the song, which is about a murderous bean curd, screamingly funny.

“I wish we had done an album,” says Jinkins of The Beets. “There is an album out there that fans put together.”

Doug’s mega crush on his classmate Patti Mayonnaise was inspired by two of Jinkins childhood crushes: one named Patti and one with the very Richmond last name of Mayo.

After struggling to find the right voice for the role, Jinkins heard actress Constance Shulman in a commercial for Kraft Mayonnaise and knew he’d found the one. Completely by chance, Jinkins’ wife was Shulman’s aerobics instructor and made the connection.

“Just hearing her voice, I melt. It’s just the best voice,” says Jinkins of Shulman. “Mayonnaise, it’s just creamy and smooth, hmmmm. There’s a silliness to it.”

Skeeter Valentine’s last name is a reference to Henrico’s Valentine Road, which Jinkins grew up on. The road was named for the Valentine family that once farmed that land.

While Valentine is also a very Richmond name, Christina Keyser Vida, the Elise H. Wright Curator of General Collections at the Valentine Museum, says there is no known link between the farmland owners and the family that made a fortune on their namesake “meat juice” health tonic.

After “Doug,” many members of the show’s cast and crew went on to other big projects.

Billy West, the voice of Doug and his antagonist Roger Klotz, voiced Bugs Bunny in “Space Jam,” both title characters in “The Ren & Stimpy Show,” the red M&M, and the “Futurama” characters Philip J. Fry, Professor Farnsworth and Zoidberg. Newman served as the “mouthsounds” performer on “Prairie Home Companion,” and Shulman played Yoga Jones on “Orange is the New Black.”

Jinkins created other children’s shows, including “PB&J Otter,” “Allegra’s Window” and “Pinky Dinky Doo.” For “Doug” superfans, Jinkins now sells original, signed animations cells online through The Cricket Gallery in Atlanta.

So, will Jinkins frequent the Honker Burger the next time he visits Richmond?

“Now that I know about it,” he says, “it would be impossible not to.”