But, in all honesty, you have to be in
America to truly experience a burger. Pure ground meat, with that perfect
percentage of fat, slapped on a hot grill, seasoned with nothing but salt
pepper, cooked to a crisp, but still oozing on the inside, sandwiched between
toasted buns slathered with just mayo and mustard, is the perfect way to have a
hamburger. The rest are variations that just enhance its awesomeness. White
Castle, a company that pioneered the burger industry, in fact the slider
industry, served their burgers plain. The flavour though came from a bed of
chopped onions on the grill on which the mini patties were cooked.
The burger’s best friend has to be bacon,
but then bacon has too many friends, and an awesome friend it is. That cured
salted smoked flavour just lifts any dish and adds that extra layer of flavour
to an already great culinary invention that has too many claimants.
I have eaten burgers everywhere and there
are some great combinations that have left a mark and an imprint on my brain,
and when I think of them I can actually taste them. When I worked on an
American cruise liner, I probably cooked and served several tonnes of burgers
and probably ate a few, but I didn’t keep track. I would take a bacon
cheeseburger, packed with the regular leaves and fodder, and top it with a
spoon of spicy chilli con carne and a spoonful of guacamole, and voila! A
Hamburguesa. Needless to say, extra napkins had to be kept at hand. The Macs and
the kings failed to impress, but in New Orleans, I had a cheeseburger made with
blue cheese, in all its delicious sharp stinkiness, meant only for the
connoisseur. Back home luckily, we have no burger chains, and thank god for
small mercies, because eating a burger made of chicken, or worse, potato, is
blasphemy. If I want a chicken sandwich that looks like a burger I can go to
KFC, ROC or MFC, and if I want potato in bread, I can go to any gaddo and have
vadda pao.
The proof of the burger is in the patty,
and very few do it right. A few places have become popular burger destinations,
namely Route 66 and Burger Factory, but I think Down The Road and Bakers Street
are not far behind. I suggest people should go and eat burgers the way they
were meant to be, now, before our politicians decide that someone somewhere
might get offended by this most awesome sandwich ever created. In the words of
Mathew McConaughey, “The person who invented the burger was smart, but the man
who invented the cheeseburger was a genius,” to which I add, “the man who
invented the bacon cheeseburger was a magician, culinarily speaking.
