This will date me, I know, but I have an observation: I recall a time when a hamburger contained a single patty.
You would put ketchup and mustard on it, and maybe a bit of lettuce and onions and cheese, but that was pretty much it.
You would never have contemplated a half a pound of bacon, two cups of sautéed mushrooms, half a pineapple, three sliced avocados, two fried eggs, a good handful of hot chili peppers and five tablespoons of guacamole.
We were simpler then.
And I think we had smaller stomachs.
If someone at a fast-food counter had asked me if I wanted the triple-patty burger, my mouth would have dropped open. We didn't do mega fries. We didn't do jumbo soft drinks. And we didn't do the double burgers, let alone the triple.
But then came the fastfood fast-forward.
"We have the triple mushroom burger with six types of cheese on special," the attendant will gush when I happen into a fastfood outlet. "Would you like to add any extra toppings? Chili?
Prosciutto?
Onion rings?"
I will decline, 10 times out of 10.
I do not know what has happened here, but I do know this: back in "the day," no one offered to put onion rings on my burger, let alone two extra patties. Relish, maybe. Chili, not so much.
If I wanted to go crazy, I'd opt for a slice of cheddar, but that was pretty much it.
"Oh," a colleague at work said the other day. "We went shopping south of the border on the weekend and found the most AMAZING burger joint!"
"Really?" I asked. "And what makes their burgers stand out?"
"The toppings!" she said. "I'm talking things like tzatziki and pastrami and chutney! They're pretty big, though. I had trouble finishing mine."
I nodded. I understood. The burger probably weighed 64 pounds and had to be delivered by crane.
Now maybe I'm being a food wimp, but I like to be able to eat every bit of my burger. And ideally, I'd like something I am able to pick up and carry toward the direction of my mouth.
Where this is going, I am not certain, but I do have some suspicions. Six-patty burgers? Eight, perhaps? Topped with oysters, possibly, and egg foo yung, pancakes, shrimp and salted, buttered popcorn?
Hey, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest, but I think I'll take a pass.
There's a reason a burger is called a burger. And it has nothing to do with shrimp.
