Whatever Happened To The Hamburger?

so beefy!

Whatever happened to the hamburger?

It seems like you can't find a good, old fashioned, straight up burger anymore.

The hamburger used to be a menu item at every restaurant, sometimes with cheese if you liked, and eventually a couple other variations came along and they decided to pretty much form a hamburger band that occupied about one-third of a menu page.

It looked something like this:

• Hamburger - 1/4 pound burger, with lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle, ketchup and mustard
• Cheeseburger - same as above with a slice of cheese on it
• Double hamburger - (you guess it) two hamburger patties with all the same toppings
• Bacon Double Cheeseburger - heaven in your mouth

And that was fine.  If you wanted something a little more risque, you might venture over to McDonald's and have the Big Mac because it had a special sauce - but that was a specialty burger, and almost the holy grail of all hamburgers in its own way.

Then along came the chicken burger; covered in that disgusting mayonnaise. And someone said, hey, let's take the mayo from the chicken burger and put it on the regular burger.  And my heart sank a bit.

Now, I've been to places where the hamburgers take up an entire menu page.  And they have ridiculous names:

• Squakin' Rockin' Turkey Burger
• The Something What Too Big To Be Too Big Burger
• The Outback Westerner

 And so on, and so on.

I've also been to some restaurants that are totally devoted to hamburgers.  It's like you're an assembly line worker, getting to pick all the pieces of your Frankenstein Hamburger.  It's all so gourmet.  It's not even really a hamburger anymore so much as it is a dinner entree. 

what is that bubbly stuff on the bottom part of the bun?  does this burger have boils?

First you start by picking your bun - white bun, whole wheat bun, 12-grain, bleached wheat to look like white bun, or gluten-free-vegan-inspected-bun.

Then you pick what type of patty you want - beef burger, chicken burger, turkey burger, or veggie burger.  Wait a sec... I thought we were having hamburgers here?

So you start to get my point.  You move on to choose from eleven kinds of imported cheese, thirty different vegetable options, and ten different sauces (eight of which are just fucking mayonnaise with a different kind of spice stirred into it).  I'll just have ketchup and mustard please and thank you.

"Can I take your order?'
"uh... gosh... there's a lot to choose from... maybe I'll try the... uh... what's the Chef's Omega Sauce?"
"It's a garlic infused, sun-dried tomato blended mayonnaise, lightly seasoned with lemon juice."
"Can I have this 'Omega Supreme Burger' without it?"
"Absolutely!  Would you like to try the Pepperjack Mayo instead?"
"Uh... no. Not really.... listen, do you just have a juicy hamburger with ketchup, mustard, lettuce, onion, and tomato?  Maybe a pickle on the side?"
"You mean you don't want a pretentiously spiced up mayonnaise on your burger?  Fine.  Which type of bun would you like?"
"The kind hamburgers come on."

You know, you can still get just a plain hamburger at McDonalds?  Yeah, the fucking thing is, like, seventy-nine cents or something and it tastes alright for seventy-nine cents.  I'm not saying it's great, but for seventy-nine cents you get a bun, a patty, some ketchup, and a pickle.  I don't even think it's on the menu, but they do make it. 

So, whatever happened to the hamburger?  I miss it.

- ryan of the ryan fan club