The ironicically-named Health Camp's vintage neon sign beckons all those who want a hand-formed burger smashed on the grill -- it looks like a dive but the burgers are divine. It's a Waco institution, just a block east of the I-35 at the US 77/TX 356 traffic circle in Waco.
When Mama Blaster and a buddy came with the Garland Health Department boys through Waco, they ate at Rudy's and we ate at the Health Camp. CHICKENS!!
From Texas Highways: (
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"Waco's Historic Roundabout
Written by Randy Mallory.
Watch that truck slowing ahead! Good, he’s veering off to La Salle Avenue. Blue sedan approaching from Valley Mills Drive! Okay, she waves me on and eases in behind. My heart-pounding circumnavigation passes five roadways where I can get off—look out for that sports car changing lanes!—or where others can merge into the circuitous flow.
Out of the corner of my wide eyes, I notice several restaurants on the circle—Trujillo’s and El Chico for Mexican, Rudy’s for barbecue, and the Texas Road-house for steaks—plus the Comfort Suites Hotel. The new hotel’s upper floors offer the best view of the two-lane circle and the 200-foot-diameter, five-pointed brick Texas star that sprawls across its raised island.
I also spy two landmark eateries largely responsible for the circle’s survival—Health Camp Burgers & Shakes and the Elite Circle Grille.
Health Camp Burgers has served home-style burgers, fries, and shakes on the circle for 55 years. With a juicy Health Camp cheeseburger and rich chocolate shake under my belt, I soak up the old-fashioned ambiance. Aging photos line the walls—an aerial shot of the circle in the 1940s, a sepia print of the joint when burgers cost 25 cents, and a fading photo of the double-meat, double-cheese “Super Health Burger.”
Super Health Burger? Oxymoron? “If you don’t eat, it’s not healthy,” laughs current owner David Tinsley.
Actually, the restaurant’s founder, the late Jack Shavitz, got the name Health Camp from an egg farm in the Midwest. “My customers love this place just the way it is. I’d be tarred and feathered if it changed much,” David adds.
One thing’s for sure. The Health Camp’s window seats offer front-row traffic-watching. “It’s sort of a spectator sport,” says David. “This is where people ought to take their driving test. If you can drive the circle, you can drive anywhere.” To encourage circle runs, Health Camp—a longtime hangout for Baylor University students—sells brightly colored T-shirts proclaiming “I Survived the Circle.”
The circle was built in 1933 on the Dallas-to-San Antonio highway. In the mid-1960s, Interstate 35 was completed only a stone’s throw west of the circle. An I-35 widening project two decades later included a plan to revamp the circle for improved traffic flow. Local protests ended up in the governor’s office, forcing a prompt exit from any such notion.
“The circle was part of Waco’s history for generations, and we wanted to make sure it stayed that way,” recalls circle cheerleader Sammy Citrano, then co-owner (with David Tinsley) of Health Camp and the historic Elite Cafe. (Sammy now owns another Waco landmark eatery, George’s Restaurant, about a mile north.)
. . . ."