The Washington Nationals are not a very good baseball team. About 40% of the way through the MLB season, they’re 11 games out of first place. Last in their division. But a 22-year-old kid named Stephen Strasburg has given Beltway baseball fans and cheeseburger chowhounds alike something to cheer about recently. The right-handed pitcher from [...]
Fatburger is one of those chains I’d heard of (probably because of that overtly-obnoxious name) but never been to. Then, at a red light a few miles from home, I suddenly saw one I’d never noticed before, sandwiched between a Starbucks and some place wanting to buy my gold. I don’t drink coffee, and I [...]
In my part of the country, barbeque is a big deal. Folks ’round these parts get pretty fired up about hickory wood, smoke rings, bark, dry rubs, and secret sauces. Conventional wisdom suggests that the best barbeque (or barbecue, or BBQ, or B-B-Q, depending on your particular grammatical preference) can come only from an independent, [...]
A Vegemite sandwich, it sure ain’t. Owners of an Australian cafe have created a 210-pound cheeseburger, a feat they say will put them in the record books. The beastly burger is made up of 178 pounds of ground beef, 120 eggs used as a binding agent for the meat, 120 slices of cheese, 16 tomatoes, [...]
Hello, Cheese-burger.net Reader. Your dad asked me to pass along a message (since you never call home anymore). He said that for Father’s Day this year, he DOES NOT want another necktie. He is also patently not interested in a World’s Best Dad coffee mug, a hammer with his name engraved on the handle, a [...]
Ah, Memorial Day. The unofficial start of summer. Few things are more universally American around the last Monday in May than to take a dip in a newly-opened swimming pool, flip on a car race, and fire up the grill for the first big cookout of the season. Unless, of course, you’re staring down the [...]
If everything is, in fact, bigger in Texas, then residents of the Dallas suburb of Garland had better get ready for some ungodly-long lines. The iconic California burger chain In-N-Out has confirmed long-rumored plans to expand its reach to the Lone Star State for the first time. That was the scene in 2007 when In-N-Out [...]
Double-drive-thru chain Checkers (or Rally’s, depending on where you live) has unveiled plans to do a limited test launch of 6 new premium cheeseburgers. Dubbed the Flavor Built Burgers, the new menu items will feature top-shelf ingredients and toppings and be offered exclusively at 18 restaurants in the chain’s home state of Florida. “At Checkers, [...]
The best of a cheeseburger blended with everything that’s great about pizza sounds like a no-brainer awesome-on-awesome hybrid. But while the idea of a cheeseburger pizza sounds spectacular, I’m usually left feeling like I got neither a true cheeseburger experience nor real pizza taste. I was forced to reconsider, though, when the family and I [...]
Ever wonder where the most celebrated chefs in the world go when they need a fast-food fix? Men’s magazine Esquire did, asking A-list restaurateurs and famous TV foodies to name their top picks. Fried chicken, BBQ, tacos, and ice cream were all represented, but no category received the loyal love that cheeseburgers did. And one [...]
For someone who eats cheeseburgers on a semi-professional basis, I’m admittedly terrible about hitting new places. I finally made it to Grindhouse Killer Burgers months after they opened. It took me over a year to get to Flip Burger Boutique. And I spent an embarrassing 15 years in Atlanta before I found Ann’s Snack Bar, [...]
O Canada! Move over, Jim Carrey. Step aside, Barenaked Ladies. Time’s up, Wayne Gretzky. There’s a new “biggest thing ever” to come out of the Great White North. And it’s got a hundred-pound bun. That’s the new World’s Biggest Burger, or at least that’s the title it’s expected to claim when the Guinness folks get [...]
Back in August, after Business Week published a “Most Innovative Burgers” list, I kind of pissed in celebrichef Richard Blais’ cornflakes. The molecular-gastronomist-slash-foodie-rockstar behind Atlanta’s Flip Burger Boutique had an entry on the list, and I was none too impressed. About his Pate Melt Burger, I scoffed, “…if veal and pork pate topped with lingonberries [...]
Scented candles are a big stinkin’ deal. Go to a specialty megastore like Bed Bath & Beyond or the housewares department at Target, and your olfactory senses will kick into overdrive before you even get both feet in the candle aisle. With the right candle, you can make your living room smell like just about [...]
As the primary chef in our household, I’m the one responsible for putting dinner on the table on a nightly basis. And with a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old in the house, finding meal options that actually get eaten can be a challenge. But I’ve never had a complaint when cheeseburger pie is on the menu. [...]
The restaurant that boasts over 200 items on its menu is cooking up 6 new ones. The Cheesecake Factory, the popular California-based chain best-known for gargantuan portions, thirty-some cheesecake flavors at any given time, and positively palatial dining rooms, has introduced half a dozen new cheeseburgers to its already-extensive roster of entrées. To celebrate the [...]
The ongoing burger wars have claimed another casualty. Popular chain Fuddruckers (through parent company Magic Brands) has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it sells its $40 million worth of assets to a Florida-based company. While none of the 135 franchisee-owned restaurants will be affected, 24 of the 85 corporate-owned Fuddruckers will close by [...]
To say that The Varsity is an Atlanta landmark is an understatement. “Institution” is a more apropos word to describe this 82-year-old, two-story, full-city-block-long hot dog joint that serves 2 miles of frankfurters EVERY DAY. I call it a hot dog joint because that’s what the World’s Largest Drive-In is best known for: greasy little [...]
Finally. For all of us unapologetic carnivores who’ve suffered the tsk-tsk-tsking from “concerned” and “conscientious” friends about the irreparable and unspeakably evil things we’re doing to our bodies with every cheeseburger we suck down, there’s at long last some ammunition to fire back with. A report released this week by a Wisconsin-based agricultural nonprofit group [...]
Funny how we mythologize moments from our past. That girl I made out with in the Holiday Inn hot tub in college probably wasn’t as cover-girl gorgeous as I’ve built her up to be over the years. That last night in Paris in 1988, if I could re-live it, certainly wouldn’t be as wild and [...]
As a rule, any press release put out by a bunch called The Cancer Project is probably gonna be a real downer. I’m sure that plenty of folks scan a list of the “Five Most Unhealthful Gourmet Burgers” and shake their heads disapprovingly at the gastronomical hand grenades included therein. That’s what the Washington, DC-based [...]
We’re just hours away from opening day of baseball season, which means chowhounds like us can soon start taking BP- biting practice- on the year’s new stadium concession stand offerings. One of the most eagerly-awaited debuts in the major leagues for the 2010 season is in downtown Minneapolis, where the Twins are set to open [...]
Order a fast-food cheeseburger these days, and you’ve got some hard choices to make. American or Swiss? Bacon or mushrooms? Ketchup or mustard? Well, a Florida man can now add a new one: Phillips-head or flat-head? When Chase Eversole bit into his Bacon Double Cheeseburger last week, he got more than a mouthful. He got [...]
Back in October of last year, we told you about Burger King’s efforts to step up the burger experience for hungry customers with a restaurant redesign for its 12,000 locations. Part of that revamp was to include shiny new “flexible batch broilers” that would allow BK kitchens to crank out extra-thick burgers, grilled chicken and [...]
Grilling backyard burgers is damn near sacred to me. I definitely subscribe to the whole “approach love and cooking with reckless abandon” philosophy, but only to a point. After I spend an afternoon manning the grill, they had better be really good. Taking one bite and shrugging off a new cheeseburger twist as a failed [...]
Oh, the burger blotter just keeps growing and growing. There was the Kansas City woman who trashed a Mickey D’s when her order got screwed up. There were the dudes who landed their small-engine planes on a frozen lake in the middle of Minneapolis to grab lunch at a local burger bar. There was the [...]
Sandra Bullock, Hollywood superstar, with almost 40 film credits on her resume, was just hours away from the biggest moment of her career. She was up for an Academy Award for her lead role in “The Blind Side,” part of a list of nominees that included perhaps the greatest actor in history. She was the [...]
Last Thursday, while the overexposed celebrichefs and starry-eyed foodie gawkers were noshing their way through Rachael Ray’s VIP event in Miami, I decided to have my own personal burger bash at my favorite spot, the Vortex Bar & Grill. While their location in Midtown Atlanta isn’t as in-your-face crazy as the Little Five Points store [...]
Friday, March 5 should be honored as a momentous day for all of us in BurgerWorld. It was on that date in 1935 that the glorious cheeseburger was born. That is, if you believe one version of the story. If you head to 2776 North Speer Boulevard in Denver today, you’ll find Key Bank. In [...]
Twenty-seven top chefs from around the globe descended on Miami last week to take part in the 2010 Burger Bash, part of the Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival. And while beermaker Amstel Light is the event’s title sponsor, it’s generally seen as media darling Rachael Ray’s party. Here she is cramming one [...]