Having tasted over 3 wines in the last two minutes, I was ready for our first ever blind cheeseburger tasting. I called all my friends to join me, but one of them was busy that day, something about watching paint dry. Anyway 12 Noon was the call time, 12:01 was the call back time just in case it was busy. The day of multiple nearly cooked 3 OZ. cheese burgers had both of us licking our chops in anticipation, or it could have been our chapped lips from living in an alley for months.
I sourced the cheese burgers from a few of the countries top purveyors (Have you ever taken a purvey? Can you take a purvey?), BK, McDonalds, White Castle, Checker and Wendy’s. The burger a 3 oz (pre-unwrapped weight), prime, center cut 1/8 thick burger. I hoped most of them were less than a day old, but on my budget we took what we could find. Old age, new age, molded, and the here-to-for unknown “Maybemeat”. We also ordered a veggie burger as a ringer!! The burgers were grilled medium rare and slightly charred, well not slightly, most were charred like a suicide bomber in the sun. Accompanying the burgers were blind fries. Blind fries are made from potatoes with no eyes, farmers market green bean curd, fresh from the can, and 3 roasted baby potatoes, just 3 ‘cause that’s all we plebes could afford. We ended the dinner with some freshly sliced white Boars head American cheese and from ShopRites Cheese counter, and some half smoked Marlboro’s bogarted from a Hooker.
I personally spoke with each burger shop when placing the order for our killer tasting. BK and McDonalds have special order departments called “drive through windows” outside their locations. When I pulled up, because the size and exact cut I was seeking was not on their flashing menu, without asking, they patched me through to Ronald MacDonald himself (well he sounded like a clown anyway), it was so awesome! He spent time explaining how the Hamburgler had stolen most of the 3 oz burgers, but he could call Grimus who may have some left over from his dinner last night. The day my order was shipping, I called requesting an additional burger, was told my order had already been shipped. 10 minutes later, my phone rang with a representative from McDonald’s. They told me they ran out and pulled it from the mailbox, after getting special permission from Mayor McCheese, where it was sitting in the 99 degree sun and if I wanted anything added to it, they would be happy to help. That’s what I call great customer service or one desperate franchise (Screw you Morgan Spurlock!)
The burgers were served blind, well our waitress was blind, but she removed all the wrappers and even cut the Wendy’s burger into a circle by chewing off the sharp edges. We had 6 burgers which, sitting on the toilet the next day made me think that even one might have been too many.
Our two favorite burgers were the Wendy’s and BK double with cheese deluxe. Expensive yes, but they were the only ones we could keep down. They all had compelling flavours, none of which resembled a beef flavour though. After the burgers we opened a package of McDonalds Chocolate chip cookies, which were good, but I would have liked a bit more chips, and more cookie material. There were no leftovers, since this was our first meal in like a week.
We had the following wines:
2000 Pavie: I said "Night Train!" stiff hard and easily killed whatever bacteria was hiding between the buns. It was rocking, no actually I was rocking as I heaved over the bowl. We actually got this bottle as present from Jancis Robinson who suggested we use it to disinfect ourselves.
2001 Charles Shaw: At 2 bucks a wee bit pricey for us, especially since our disability checks were late, but good, and the labels are a hit with the shopping bag ladies!
Dump Bucket Cuvee’: Some wine nerds left this at a table and when they weren’t looking we grabbed it. Interesting notes of backwash and saliva..yum!
Thank you to the guy that attended. Rumor has it, we'll be doing a few more events in the alley in the near future, but I have a lot of wind shields to shine if we are ever going to splurge like that again!
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