Below is a 3,000 word free write on burgers. Nothing has been edited, beyond the occasional typo (their -> there) or misused word (that -> the). I wrote this in three separate sittings, across a day and a half, and did not read what I had written until I was done.
I won’t lie – this will take the average reader about 12 minutes to get through. Begin at your own risk!
I love burgers. Cheeseburgers to be exact. I love the taste, the way that you eat a burger (held between two hands), the variety of toppings and ways of preparing one. I love their ubiquity (diners, fast food, fine dining) and the fact that I can find one in any single city, county, or country. The burger may be one of the most common types of food in the world (my western view of the matter). I love the greasiness, and the way that the bun sandwiches the meat together and makes it so easy to eat. I love all the memories I have of eating burgers and the places I’ve been while I’ve eaten them.
The perfect burger has no shape. It isn’t a thick, hand-packed patty or two thinly smashed ones; it’s not plain, with ketchup, or smothered in onions, pickles and special sauce. The perfect burger isn’t eaten in a diner or on a white table cloth, and its bun is neither grilled nor smattered with sesame seeds. The perfect burger is a feeling.
I say this because a burger is an incredibly personal piece of food. To like salmon, one typically means they like salmon in its most common form: marinated and grilled or broiled. There are many, many ways to prepare salmon, but chances are if you enjoy one of those variations you will enjoy them all. To like salmon is to like salmon.
Burgers are different. I love burgers. I have not found a single burger that I didn’t enjoy enough to eat in its entirety. This is true of Costco microwaveable burgers and the cold, lifeless patty at Bembos, a particularly unimaginative fast food chain in Peru. Both times I took a bite, recognized the travesty in front of me, and ate on. Humans are conditioned to enjoy salty, fatty foods. So I don’t see how I could find a burger I didn’t like.
Even so, I am incredibly particular about my burgers. I don’t put mustard on them unless there is ketchup as well. I don’t put ketchup unless it’s accompanied by either mayo or mustard. Mayo is the only condiment, other than the mayo-based special sauces, that I will let sit front and center on my burger. I would prefer a juicy, sauceless burger to a dry one with sauce.
Some of my favorite burgers have had Swiss cheese, sautéed onions and mushrooms, but I almost never think to order that. Often, I order lettuce, tomato, onions and mayo, only to leave the tomatoes on the side. I’m not sure I know how to order lettuce without the tomato. I’ve never been disappointed to order pickles, but they are a rare addition to a custom-made burger. When I see them adorning the establishment’s go-to option, I get excited.
Thick, rare burgers are best with provolone and mayo; thin ones require you double up and cover with melted American. Bacon is a beautiful thing, but hardly ever required. Avocado is delicious, but throwing it on a burger crosses the line into gluttony. I have never ordered a burger without cheese, and I don’t plan on doing so in my lifetime. I would prefer a Big Mac to a good eighty percent of other options.
If anybody read that tirade and agreed with it in its entirety, then let me know so I can go buy a lottery ticket. Or take a second read so you can catch all the things you inevitably disagree with. Because if salmon is a ubiquitously unpolarizing entree (assuming you like salmon to begin with), burgers are the exact opposite: they live to polarize.
What are the common burgers? The American (lettuce, tomato, American cheese and special sauce). The Cowboy (bacon, barbecue sauce and American cheese). The Black and Bleu (blue cheese, bacon, sometimes mushrooms). Maybe some variation of the Baja/Cali/Surf (anything with avocado). Sometimes a Mexican (pico de gallo).
Faced with those options, what do we do? We scroll through, confirming that the Cowboy at this particular restaurant is what we’re used to. If we like a Cowboy Burger, then we’ll order one, but if that’s not your thing I doubt you’re going to give it a shot. I’ve eaten burgers with dozens of people, and if I know them fairly well I can probably anticipate their order. I certainly know who will add mayo, who will add barbecue and who will go for blue cheese. We all share a common love for the vessel but wouldn’t swap burgers if our lives depended on it.
Picture this: one hundred people order custom made burgers, and then everyone is given one of those burgers at random. Maybe you get the hamburger with blue cheese and yellow mustard. Or you grab one of my favorites, mayo and raw onions. The burgers are stale, the grease soaked through the bag. You’re hungry. You ordered ahead and spent 20 minutes in the car (ok, I guess this takes place in 2012) only to get home and find that you were accidentally given a sociopath’s ketchup and tomato slathered hamburger. Your body starts to convulse, having spent the last hour anticipating a direct shot of salty animal fat to the liver. You now have to choose, do you force it down, or go eat some crackers?
When I pick up a burger, I am seldom able to put it back down before it’s all gone. Putting a burger down is difficult, for emotional and practical reasons. For one, I love it – how can I set it down? Each bite I take squeezes something onto my hands, be it translucent juices or globs of melted cheese. If I set her down, I think, my next bite will be delayed… and I’ve only just started! As I chew I hold my burger close, and before I’ve swallowed each bite I take another. I hack off the corners, first left then right, until I’m left with the filet, that final bite, the pocket of bun that has collected all the drippings of my feast and causes me to produce excess saliva for the next five minutes. The happiest and saddest moment of any meal.
Now to the practical side. If you set down your burger, you may never fully pick it back up again. The bottom bun, if it’s good, may be soaked through with grease, and so that first pick-up is a commitment: “set me down and I will never be the same,” she seems to tell you. Still, we make these mistakes, either to take a drink, or tell a story, and when we come back to our baby we see our mistake laid out in front of us. She is disheveled, her buns askew. The greasy bun has gone cold. We eat on, salvage what we can, but we reinforce an important lesson: Once we have her, we can never let her go.
My life is in burgers. How absurd of a statement, I know, but it can be true of anything one loves. Cheeseburgers at McDonald’s with my aunt and cousins; big, one pound burgers at Alonzo’s with Grandad; my dad’s onion and lamb burgers on a Friday night in the summer; rubbery Pit burgers at Wake, the cheese unmelted; grease-soaked Shake Shack after long runs in Brooklyn. I have been comforted so often by these bun-wrapped patties.
The burger’s history is unclear, as it should be. After all, it is an American institution; an icon. It transcends brands, like Coke, which are the inventions of mere mortals, and takes on an otherworldly dimension. Who invented the burger? Might as well ask who invented the open road, or the handshake. Who invented a mother’s hug or a punch from a bully? A burger is invented in the way that a belief is invented… and who can lay claim to one of those?
What is your death row meal? That famous question, which so many of us ponder and which (almost) none of us will ever have to answer. Well, what is it? People go one of three ways: something luxurious (lobster and caviar), something simple (Captain Crunch) or something meaningful (Ma’s meatballs and gravy). Well I choose choice. On my deathbed, before the chair, I want burgers. I want to start with a bite of a Whopper, to remind myself what the bottom tastes like, and then wash that down with a corner morsel from one of the two patty wonders at David’s Cafe in the East Village. I want a bite of the Big Kahuna burger from the Top Dog in Avon, North Carolina, followed by a frozen Bubba Burger overcooked on the grill. As I’m led to the chair, I want a McDouble in either hand, slathered in Mac sauce, so that my synapses, prior to being fried by the state, can experience the pure bliss of God’s greatest creation one last time.
Here is how I eat a burger. First, I order one. I’m generally a gluttonous orderer, am afraid of going hungry, but with burgers I take it to a new extreme. A half pound burger feels like carrot sticks in the face of a one pounder; how could I resist? So I order something huge, always with fries. When it comes I size it up, apply the mayo. Why do restaurants dislike applying the mayo themselves? I would gladly give up the right in order to save myself a few more precious seconds between the time the plate is set down and my first bite. I’m so HUNGRY, I think, whether or not it’s true. I just want to eat the burger. So I slather on the mayo, and then I squeeze. I press the buns together until the monstrosity has been reduced to a biteable size, I take a deep breath, and then I bite. I chew, swallowing entire fractions (eighths, sometime sixths) of the burger intact. Often, if I can manage, I pick up some fries in one hand and slip them into the fray. God dammit fries are delicious. Then I return to inhaling my food, without a speck of self-awareness, until I am licking my lips, moaning in delight and anguish at having finished and trying not to ogle my companion’s burger across the table.
It has always been this way. In the car, on road trips, we’ll have barely pulled away from the drive-thru and I’ll have stuffed my garbage back into the bag, that stale familiar taste of McDonalds still on my lips. Here goes something crazy – eating McDonalds is kind of like smoking cigarettes. It sticks with you, and the majority of people love to hate it. The times I’ve smoked a cigarette, I’ve self-consciously enjoyed the smell on my fingers, a sort of reminder of what I’ve just done. Same goes for McDonalds, that oniony cheese smell providing a bit of naughty comfort as I continue on past the meal. “I’ve just eaten McDonalds,” I want to whisper to whoever I’m with afterwards. “Good lord, son!” they’ll reply. “You just ate that garbage and you’re trying to read a book/ride the subway/drive your car? Are you insane?”
How does a burger become classy? How does it become healthy? I’ve always found it interesting that people are so opposed to eating McDonalds, but are perfectly fine eating a practically larger burger in a nicer restaurant. There must be reasons why, and I don’t doubt that on some level it’s healthier. But McDonalds sells its food to billions worldwide. BILLIONS! So don’t tell me you think it’s gross. Maybe you do, but still don’t tell me. It has been artificially conditioned in a lab, under ideal conditions, and through the overeager testing of billions of happy customers, to taste… great. To have five times the amount of salt that it should. To jam-pack its buns with sugar. Humans love salt, sugar and fat (have I already said this before?) and they get it in droves in a McDonalds cheeseburger.
That’s not to say that I don’t, at times, toss my personal Lady Liberty aside. Currently, I am “not eating fast food,” which means I’m only eating it if I’ve burned roughly 2,000 calories on a run beforehand. Not that burning calories makes the fake ingredients I’m ingesting any better for me, but somehow it just feels better. So, given that I’m not eating fast food, I’m not in that camp of people who think that restaurant burgers are better. And in so many ways they are. But, like a pack of Marlborough’s, a McDonalds cheeseburger is a commodity you can get anywhere. I’ve only once eaten a McDonalds cheeseburger and thought “this isn’t right,” but that was in Peru, the burger patty was a light grey color, and still I ate the whole thing. That one decision cost me about ten pounds in lost water weight (and most likely destroyed a Hilton’s septic system), and STILL I EAT AT MCDONALDS. So while I certainly appreciate a great burger, can taste the difference between an ammonia-soaked patty and a ground filet one, I can honestly say that I love them both.
Great, this has now become about McDonalds. Redirecting.
I mentioned earlier the idea of a burger being a ubiquitous form of food in the world, and I meant it. I consider myself appreciative of other cultures – I would hate to show up in Thailand and discover that everybody drove air conditioned SUVs to a Barnes & Noble store in a strip mall – but somehow I get a shot of patriotism anytime I see a burger on a menu somewhere outside the US. “Fuck yea!” I think. “They are appropriating American culture. I am an American. Ergo they love my culture.” Of course, the only reason the burgers are there in the first place is because of people like me, who travel somewhere for a week (Germany, Norway, Thailand) and can’t help but eat a burger on not one, but a multitude of occasions. What do they think of me? “Hey Dad, you were right! Serving burgers at the world’s best pho shop wasn’t a mistake! This moron’s actually ordered one!”
I think that gets back to burgers being in our DNA as Americans. Think of how many movies have burger eating scenes in them. Pulp Fiction – Royale with cheese. Grease – Double Polar burger with everything. Harold and Kumar literally centers around the quest for a legendary burger. Do the French have movies about the quest for a legendary baguette? Do the French give names to the types of baguette sandwiches that you can order? What would the equivalent be, in Paris, to a Double Polar burger? We name our burgers like we name our pets.
Speaking of White Castle. One year, my dad and I went on a similar quest for those infamous sliders. I was mostly enthralled by the idea that you ordered burgers by the case, like soda, and on a trip to Long Island from Baltimore we decided to make a detour to a White Castle outpost in New Brunswick. We got caught in traffic, Friday night “escape New Brunswick” type of traffic, and by the time we got there we were starving. So we over ordered. I probably ate five burgers, just one after the other after the other – my dad something similar – before both of us felt the uncontrollable urge to empty our bowels. The burgers were faster acting than Miralax, tasted far better as well, but we were forced to pull off the highway about fifteen minutes after we’d gotten back on. All for a depressing case of grease-soaked little sliders. And even after all of that, I view that trip with relish. We had fun. And the burgers were delicious.
I will end with the latest threat to a good burger: Beyond Meat and the Impossible Burger. Both are lab-grown abstractions of what a burger really is, which is a circular patty on a bun. I am not an elitist with burgers, can accept that certain turkey or black bean varieties should qualify, but the idea of creating faux-meat in a lab seems like a step too far. So we’ve got the world’s greatest food scientists on the challenge… well what is the challenge? That we continue to eat beef burgers? I just don’t see it that way, as the last 2,700 word ramble clearly shows. Put those minds to work cleaning up our slaughterhouses, or giving our chickens more room to roam. I’ll pay more for my meat, but the day that a cheeseburger is no longer available in the United States of America feels like a day with a lot more pressing concerns than that one.
With no cheeseburgers, I fear that our leaders – already corrupt that they are – will descend into madness. A backdoor meeting between a lobbyist and politician needs the burger as a reminder of the common man, who is most certainly being screwed by such a meeting. How will guys like Biden and Buttigieg be able to roll up their shirtsleeves and tuck into a Juicy Lucy at a backwoods Minnesota Kiwanis Club cookout? Where will all that grease go, and what is a country without the grease that rolls down the forearms of the collective nation? Are these questions that only I am worried about?
This has become a manifesto. I’m aware. At least the subject is neutral. Maybe PETA would be offended upon reading, but for others, I’d imagine they’re either made to be extremely bored or extremely hungry. I can’t imagine there is much in between. I will round out my 3,000 words with the most beautiful poem in the English language:
Two all-beef patties
Special sauce
Lettuce
Cheese
Pickles
Onions
On a sesame seed bun.