LOCAL HAMBURGER REVIEWS
Twenty three years ago I went with my father and older brother on a trip to Moab Utah, a mistake that I am still paying for all these many years later. It was 1987 and everyone and their little brother was trying their hand at the fast food business and hamburger joints were popping up all over the place. As with any lengthy road trip, hunger had gotten the best of me. Besides being a skinny seven-year-old, I had the metabolism of a small hummingbird, a good old fashion case of ADHD, and an appetite for destruction.
So upon our arrival to Moab I may or may not have told my loving father from the back seat that “I was hungry enough to eat a grown mans A*#”. We stopped at the hotel, unpacked our things, and drove on looking to have a memorable dinner and some local novelty diner. If I had only known what was about to take place I would have done myself a favor and walked directly into oncoming traffic. Though I still can’t verbally speak of this event, luckily I have had enough years of counseling and therapy that I can now at least unfold the details in writing.
We carelessly selected a place called The Frosty Freeze and ran inside. While perusing the menu my dad nonchalantly said something about a Pizza Burger. The wheels in my seven-year-old brain started to turn. I thought to myself, “I love pizza and I love hamburgers, it’s the best of both worlds, it has to be amazing.” I was wrong. After just one bite I went white as a ghost and was sick as a dog. It was like taking one of those cheap frozen microwavable pizzas of the 80’s and combining it with a hamburger patty that was thrown on the grill frozen then charbroiled, overcooked, soaked in grease, and delightfully served between a day old hamburger bun.
I refused to eat another bite. My dad urged me to continue and said he’d take a bite if I took one more bite. I took another bite and immediately regretted it. While fading in and out of consciousness I can remember my dad foolishly taking a bite and being so repulsed by it that he walked over to the trash can and threw it away without saying a word. Keep in mind, this is the same man that grew up drinking buttermilk and eating liver, boiled ochre, and, no joke, peanut butter & Miracle Whip sandwiches on a regular basis. So it speaks volumes that in a family that was always taught to finish any and every meal that it was my dad that threw the Pizza Burger away. He offered to buy me something else, but I was far from hungry, in fact I wouldn’t eat for the next couple of days. I couldn’t sleep and spent the majority of the night and weekend in the hotel puking my guts out, and suffering from a severe bout that can best be described as vertigo with a side helping of compound testicle trauma.
On that fateful day I vowed to never let what happened to me ever happen to anyone else ever again. I never got a chance to picket or boycott the Pizza Burger because it was removed from the menu within a short time after. I can only speculate here, but I believe it was because of multiple major law suits. In 1995 The Frosty Freeze was thankfully turned into a Hogi Yogi, but that was just the tip of the iceberg for me and my mission to save every possible soul from a bad burger experience. Just because The Frosty Freeze has now been out of business for more than 15 years doesn’t mean I will ever be free from its far reaching grasp. For example, in the summer 2004 I was surfing off the coast of Oceanside, California and during a routine wipeout I must have banged my duodenum harder than usual causing some unprocessed Pizza Burger to be jarred lose from my common bile duct causing my mouth to fill with the taste. Suffice it to say, I nearly drowned.. and wished that I had. I still have recurring nightmares and randomly get untimely Pizza Burger hiccups that lead me to reviewing the suicide clause in my life insurance policy.
So for this very reason since the start of 2010, my wife, my daughter, and myself have been traveling near and far to over 50 different acclaimed local restaurants and burger joints taking notes, throwing caution and calorie intake to the wind, and putting our bodies into harms way so that you will hopefully never have to go through what I have gone through.
Below are the individual categories I will be using to score each establishment during my weekly ratings and reviews.
SPECIALITY BURGER:
CHEESEBURGER:
TOPPINGS:
GREASE FACTOR:
BUN RATING:
BURGER SMELL:
PORTION SIZE:
FRIES:
PRICE:
PORTION SIZE VS. PRICE OVERALL SCORE:
AFTERMATH:
OVERALL ATMOSPHERE:
FINAL OVERALL SCORE:
