BURGER BATTLE, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!

   Where to begin this beguine, eh?
   So, this week, Kath and I did the unthinkable: We moved in with each other. And because we moved in with each other, our diets went to shit because when were we going to find the time to cook anything? Also, I'm typing on my laptop on a table as opposed to on an ottoman, so this is extra weird. Monitor all in my face like Aylmer from Brain Damage.
"Hi!"
   Anyway, as much as I would love to just blow this off and tell you it was nothing but Большая говядина и чеддер and Чизи Гордита Кранч, the truth is much more satisfying and I actually have something to talk about...

   ... the best burger I've had since October, and that was at some random food truck festival and I still feel bad that I didn't get photographic evidence or remember the truck's name. That dude made a hell of a burger.

Wagner's Drive-In, 15 June 2021


   So we're in Brooklyn Park (making this our first Brooklyn Park entry), returning the U-Haul, when we see this little place called Wagner's and it no shit looks like the kind of place where the waitresses would have brought out your food to you on roller skates back in the day. How could we not see what this place was about?
   I got a cheeseburger, nothing fancy about it and Kath got a chili cheese dog. She said that the skin on the dog was firm with a little snap and that it tasted like it was all beef and definitely had that texture, as opposed to ground up pork slurry found in most hotdogs.
   My burger was perfect. They brought that little motherfucker out to me with nothing on it. No pickle, no onion, just a perfectly salt-&-peppered hand-patted patty with some cheese on it and some catsup and mustard packets if I wanted to fancy it up.
   Now just look at those pictures. Look at them. Tell me where you can find fault in those. No Kobe beef horseshit, no seventy-thirty chuck-to-sirloin ratio, no. This was a honk of ground beef at some point and then the kitchen staff patted it into a disc, grilled it, seasoned it, melted some yellow American on it, shoved it in a bun, wrapped it in some wax paper, and shot it out the door. I cannot satisfactorily express to you how perfect simplicity is. I'm telling you that I'm a lifelong pickle man and this burger had absolutely no time to give to pickles, it was perfect as it was. I would have loved to have eaten seven more. Alas, we had to drive back to the new crib and stare at all the boxes and wonder what we I had gotten ourselves Kath into. But that burger hung onto my tastebuds and it in lingers in my memory and while I would have never given Brooklyn Park a sideways glance before, I now yearn to go back and give Wagner's a fair amount of my money. I encourage you to do the same. Like really, you should just go.

Interlude

The Cove, 16 June 2021

   Yes, you are looking at that Hawaiian Spam sushi. I had that and what I had previously thought was only the delirious rambling of some kratom-maddened YouTube chef, a sushirito.
   The sushirito is just a sushi roll that hasn't been sliced. It's also big as fuck. It's also basically a banh mi in a sushi format. It was OK but I was over it halfway through.
   The Spam mubusi, however, was the kitty's titties. I really liked that and I should have gotten two orders of that and called that my din-din. I don't know about the rest of the menu. It looked OK but there was no way I was going to get a poke bowl when they have some foodie-Colonel-Kurtz-speaking-in-tongues-but-OK-it's-real bullshit like a sushirito AND that Hawaiian Spam sushi thing that I've always been curious about.

Bread & Pickle, 19 June 2021

  One time we went to Bread & Pickle and I ordered a hotdog and they put two franks in the bun which would have been OK if they weren't as wrinkly as a shar pei and drier than the Sahara. I didn't even write it up. It was just kind of lame.
   But Saturday, there we were, biking around Lake Harriet and I needed something cold and Kath was like, "OK," and we stopped at Bread & Pickle and I saw their burger on the menu, listed as coming with special sauce and pickle. That was it. They didn't even put cheese on that bastard. But OK. Let's see what this one does.
   It was... fine. I tell you what I told Kath while I ate it: It's OK. There's nothing wrong with it. If you grew up around Lake Harriet and this was your usual summertime treat while you and the fam went to the beach, this might be your favorite burger; I can see nostalgia being a legitimate draw for some people. "Ooh, that special sauce!" "Ooh, those dill pickles!"
   But let's be honest with ourselves and others: It's a frozen Sysco -
And there's our first Sysco reference for twenty twenty one.
   Great, thanks.
   Anyway, it's a frozen Sysco patty on a brioche bun (that Kath said looked good) (it was, actually) with some tangy pink mayo-based special sauce and some dill pickles. It's six fifty. It doesn't come with anything. This isn't anything to get goofy over. I mean if it was a choice between this and, I don't know, not eating at all, I'd pick this, yeah, but it wasn't exciting. I guess, hey, kudos for trying something different but...
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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