Cheeseburger Haiku - Island Burger, part 3

Occupy Burger Town.

Did you know that the top 1% of all burgers have 40% of all burger deliciousness? Or how about that 133 out of the country's best 150 burgers contain bacon, while 78 of that number contain avocado or guacamole. Some say that those two ingredients are unfairly represented on the tasty burger scale, claiming that the ratings are skewed by some outside, malevolent influence. Lately, a lot of people getting up in arms about the inequality of burger deliciousness. Which is why we here at the Cheeseburger Haiku have decided to Occupy Burger Town.

Burger Town is not a place, but a state of mind, or, more specifically, a state of eating--burgers. Every time you are woofing down a burger, the population of Burger Town rises by one. Founded concurrent to the first time someone slapped a hamburger patty between a bun and chompy chomped it, Burger Town has a rich, storied past. Through the years it has been frequented by billions of passers-by, tourists and time-share owners. No one can live in Burger Town permanently, they can only visit it whenever hunger strikes. This hasn't stopped people from trying, however.

Harking back to the 17th century was Hansel von Grawbadinger who tried to continuously eat burgers. Having shoved an impressive 62 cheeseburgers down his throat in just three hours, he died due to drowning in meat, or as the Arkmoor Tribune claimed: "He was strong of both heart and mouth. Twas the insufficient processing at the back end which provided his his demise." Then there was Wilma 'The Gnasher' Harrington who squandered her widow's inheritance on constructing a burger as big as her house. After eating out the center, she lived in the burger house and ate the walls whenever hunger struck, dying a few weeks in to the endeavor due to spoiled meat. And who can forget Augustus H. Cromwell, the scourge of Brighton Rock, who famously trained mice to cook the tiniest burgers ever ("No bigger than a kitten's nipple," as he would often note), so that he may throw back a continuous stream of burgers into his gullet. The plan worked to perfection until delirious old Miss Crenshaw from up the street left the stove on after morning tea and burned her forty-six room manor down, letting loose an army of malnourished, borderline feral house cats into the neighborhood, where they quickly got smart to the mouse-burger factory. Suffice it to say, but Burger Town was overrun with cats during the autumn of 1907, which led to the provision in the Burger Town town charter proclaiming a standard size for admission (and thereby excluding the burger appetizer commonly referred to as the 'slider').

With all of those who have spectacularly failed to occupy Burger Town in the past, what makes us at Cheeseburger Haiku think we're up to the task? We're not, at least not by ourselves. The Cheeseburger Haiku is calling on you and the rest of our burger brethren to take up arms by taking up burgers. Munch down those delicious all-beef patties at any opportunity you get, and when to arrive in Burger Town, take up the chant of the people: "We are the Cheeseburger Haiku! We are the Cheeseburger Haiku!" Make yourselves heard. Tell the world that all burgers should be delicious. That just because a burger commingles with bacon or successfully lobbies for guacamole that it isn't inherently better than the other burgers, or a big, unfair-share-of-deliciousness hoarding jerk burger. Those burgers shouldn't be punished for their deliciousness. It's the other burgers that need to step it up. Let's make bacon the standard and provide an opt-out policy for any weirdos who don't appreciate it. Let's subsidize the guacamole business so that it's as common as ketchup. Take it to the streets of Burger Town. Tell it to the Burgermeister: I am the 99% (who love burgers with bacon and guacamole).

That's what we here at the 575 did this past weekend. We marched right on into the Island Burger (new location!) and ordered the Pepe, consisting of bacon, guacamole, blackened, grilled onion and lettuces. It was a right-good burger, one I've already written about, and thus making it the first repeat burger on the Cheeseburger Haiku.

Cheeseburger Haiku - Elevation Burger

...and we're back!

Sorry to leave y'all high and dry on the burger haiku front for these past few weeks, but the staff of Cheeseburger Haiku decided to take a little hiatus coming out of the intense summer season. But forget all that, we're back now and that's what matters. The first burger to start the new school year is from Elevation Burger, a quasi-hippie burger joint.

"Quasi-hippie?" You're probably saying to yourself in disgust. I understand, and I'm sorry, but I was hungry and I had just finished bowling (for the low, low price for $12.95 a game) and I needed a burger. This place looked like it sold burgers, so the good folks of Cheeseburger Haiku decided to test the waters. Allow me to explain you what a quasi hippie burger place does: 1) they don't feed their cows with spare cow parts and instead feed them lawn clippings, 2) they let their stupid cows just go wherever they want and make them suffer through the agony of flies buzzing around they heads instead of dousing them with bug spray while they out in yon fields, 3) they cook their fries in the same stuff that the ancient Greeks used to bathe themselves in (olive oil), and 4) they sure as shit like drawing your attention to just how eco-friendly their food is.

Here at the Cheeseburger Haiku, we prefer to eat meals from cows that have been fed other cows, which grew to slaughterin' size on other cows, which ate their mama cows, and so on. This is because of the concept of compound deliciousness. If one cow is delicious, then certainly a cow fed other cows would delicious plus some fraction of deliciousness from the old cow. Some quack scientist will tell you that this could lead to mad cow disease, but we say psshha! more like mad-delicous cow. The only thing that could be mas delicioso would be if the cows were hand-fed bacon by John Goodman.

Additionally, we are of the consensus that the freedom to range freely is a cage in and of itself. In the age of the constant media blitz, we are bombarded with choice after choice after choice. There is so much to do that most people usually end up doing nothing but reading burger blogs day in, day out. Our freedom of choice actually restricts us, which is why the best art is not free-form, open-ended art, but highly structured art with strict rules and guidelines. I'm talking about the 5-7-5. I'm talking about the haiku. The Cheeseburger Haiku. Now if the cows are out gallivanting around, surfing the internet, flipping through the channels and just being generally blase about life, then they're not going to focus on the timeless art of being delicious. We need to get them cows back on the factory floor and submit them to 24 hours a day of sub-, supra-, and ultra- liminal deliciousness training.

So how about the burger? I got the Elevation Burger, which is double meat, double cheese (real cheddar), with my choice of toppings. I chose pickles, grilled onions, ketchup and lettuce. When I got the burger, it became apparent that this was just fancy fast food. It came wrapped in paper and was all greasy with the cheese oozing out. It looked pretty promising. It tasted a little like grass. Just a little though. The olive oil-fried fries were overcooked and soggy, requiring copious amounts of ketchup. The brightest spot of meal time was the root beer--which I believe was call Wild Bill's Root Beer. This root beer was fed root beer directly into it's roots and so on and so forth down the line back to the time when Wild Bill himself first decided he likee him some root beer.

Overall, the burger experience was decent and I would likely eat there again if there were a location nearer to my 'hood. in other words, I'm not going out of my way to go to Elevation Burger, even with the frequent burger-er punch card they gave me.