GOT WORD THAT Tobias Wolff was reading at the Make-Out Room. I'm not a reading reviewer, but the Make-Out Room is one of my favorite bars, and Tobias Wolff is one of my favorite writers. Always will be, on the strength of one old story, "Hunters in the Snow." The Make-Out Room being more a music club than a reading room, I thought this might be my one opportunity in life to sit in an audience, drunk, and holler out, " 'Hunters in the Snow'!"

Apropos of something, I mean. I mean, not that there would be a chance in holy hell of hearing him actually read that actual story. It's long. It's old. Writers don't do like that, etc. It's just that I've been sitting in bars, drunk, and hollering " 'Hunters in the Snow'!" (apropos of nothing) for 20 years.

And if you've been keeping up with my philosophical "progress" on this page, then you know that "nothing" means nothing at all, according to me, unless you make it mean a little something yourself, with ketchup. Meaning: if you happen to be in the habit of yelling out " 'Hunters in the Snow'!" in bars, and then you find out that Tobias Wolff – an old-timer Stanford tweed, as likely to turn up in a Mission dive as I am to eat at Lulu – is reading at the Make-Out Room ... you go. If for no other reason, just to make sense for once in your life.

With ketchup. Pickles, onions, lettuce ...

If this is starting to sound like a burger, it's because that's what I'm leading back to: dinner, before the reading, at Mega Mouth Burgers and Beers, my new favorite neighborhood burger joint [editor's note: the sign outside still says Big Mouth]. It's on 24th Street at Valencia, so their burgers don't have no hormones, antibiotics, insecticides, or chemical residues in them! It says so on the back of the menu, illustrated with a charming flowchart of the "natural beef cycle," which includes – spectacularly – football fields, snow-capped mountains, the word "genetics," and a big truck.

But you won't need all that to whet your appetite. The place smells great from the get-go. Even beforehand, out on the sidewalk, you can whiff the broiling beef. They have other stuff besides burgers, like free-range chicken breast sandwiches, Cajun sausages, and, for the vegetarians, eggplant and garden burgers. Caesar salads. Beers. Shakes and floats featuring Mitchell's ice cream ... All this in a comfortable coffeehouse atmosphere, with nice wooden tables and, miraculously, a Cleveland Indians game playing on a little TV over the door.

But I had company: my friend Meredith, also a fan of Tobias Wolff, and pork. She ordered the oddly named "Texan" ($5.95), which is sliced pork loin with barbecue sauce on a French roll. It wasn't very good, maybe because Texas is cow country and pork is pigs. Or maybe it was just dry and overcooked.

Anyway, it's a burger joint. So let's just eat burgers from now on, OK? For $5.75 they come with fries (fresh cut and good), baked beans (so-so), or coleslaw (don't know). The menu states that the burgers are medium, but I asked for mine rare, and it came out somewhere in-between. In any case, it was damn, damn good.

As for the reading, well, there were about seven or eight readers, and a singer, and a short break, before my guy went (last), so I got to get good and googly.

The event was a benefit by MoveOn.org to raise money for the Kerry-Edwards campaign. The stories were thankfully not political, but there were some introductory rah-rahs and such. One thing they talked about that percolated my ears a little was what they're calling "operation Ohio." Apparently a bunch of people are going to Ohio and going around to colleges, I think they said, registering voters and rallying support for the good guys. Or lesser-of-two-evils guys, I should say. Tobias Wolff and other big-shot tweeds have volunteered to call Ohioans on Election Day and either read them a story over the phone, or remind them to vote, or both. Or something else entirely. You have to understand that I was sitting in the very back of the room, at the bar, practicing my " 'Hunters in the Snow'!" under my breath, and waiting for Tobias Wolff to be introduced. They'd told me he was going to be third or fourth three or four glasses of wine and seven or eight writers ago.

Finally, he was introduced. "Tobias Wolff," they said.

" 'Hunters in the Snow,' " I said. Under my breath.

The story he read was about a dog and an old guy.

I'm from Ohio. I have a lot of family and one big good friend there. Problem is, I don't know if I could even talk myself into voting Kerry-Edwards. Tobias, call me.

Mega Mouth Burgers and Beers. 3392 24th St., S.F. (415) 821-4821. Daily: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Takeout available. Beer. Discover, MasterCard, Visa. Wheelchair accessible.

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Dan Leone is the author of Eat This, San Francisco (Sasquatch Books), a collection of Cheap Eats restaurant reviews, and The Meaning of Lunch (Mammoth Books).