A Marathon Burger Day, or Burgers for Breakfast

After a depressingly long hiatus from rounded meat patties, today I ended up eating nothing but cheeseburgers. And side dishes that go along with cheeseburgers. And maybe a cookie too. It was a good day.

I picked up Bill at Logan after his trip to California since apparently no one else was able to do it. This was slightly after 10:00am. As we were navigating Logan's treacherous road system (which I believe was designed by a guy who was inspired by the web of a drunk spider), he suggested that we could get burgers at RF O'Sullivan since we were sort of close to it. I gave them a call and found out they opened at 11, so that was good news. I was also shocked to find that I was able to get there from the eastern side of Cambridge, since that meant I needed exit 20 instead of exit 18, even though I was going to the same place. I put that little tale in there because someone else has got to find that strange.

It turns out that 11am is a good time to beat the rush, since we were the first people there. Surprisingly, another group of people came in as well. That's how good the burgers are. I had the Black & Blue burger again, and it was super again. My only issue with it is that they use bleu cheese dressing and put it on last, which meant that by the end of the meal I had bleu cheese hands.

Also, their pickles aren't great.

Fast forward to dinner, and it was burgers again! Mostly because Chuck was bribing me, Bill, Kathryn, Mia, Nate and Mia's roommate Sarah Beth with burgers in exchange with assistance in addressing wedding invitations. The burgers of the night, at least for me, were made with both bleu cheese and American (melted over the crumbled bleu cheese to keep it from escaping), mushrooms and sauteed onions. Then we got wild for the 2nd burger and actually put the bleu cheese inside. That was an even better method to prevent premature bleu cheese jail breaks.

I have a strong suspicion that today will be far less burger-filled.

-Jon

More Fast Food

Now, the first burger after a trip to RF's is always going to suffer from high expectations, so it was not going to bode well for the burger we grabbed on the way home that we stopped at Wendy's. Since I'm not a huge fast food fan in the first place (exception made for In-N-Out Burger of course), there is not much chance that I was going to be wowed by this thing.

After we left Boston, we traveled about 13 minutes before I fell asleep. Then I woke up and found that we had only gone like 3 exits and then hit some ridiculous traffic. It was completely stop-and-go, with most of the emphasis being on the stop part. Finally we decided that route 20 might be a better choice, and weaseled our way off the highway at exit 10A. And that decision brought us to Wendy's.

A long time ago I was told that it's always better at a fast food place to make a special order so that there is no way they can give you a burger that has been sitting a while. Wendy's makes this easy to do because they commit burger Sin #1 and have mayo on their Big Bacon Classic. Side note - the Big Bacon Classic has been demoted from the list of numbered meals. What is that about? Amy and I both opted for the BBC, while Scott chose some sort of chicken looking thing. That burger was exactly what you would expect from Wendy's, with the added bonus of being put together really sloppily.

Three hours after departing, we finally arrived back at Ludlow. This is far too long of a time for that trip. At least the rest of the weekend was super wacky.

-Jon

It's Been Too Long

I don't even remember when the last time I had an R.F. O'Sullivan burger was. I mean, obviously I could look back and figure it out, but that is not going to happen after the number of "sodas" I have consumed at the present. Basically, it's been far too long.

It's pretty much a mini-RPI reunion here at Alex's apartment, which is much smaller than it should be for this number of people. Also, there is currently a dog on my bed. Well, air-mattress.

But I digress.

We went to R.F. O'Sullivan (and Son) for dinner, because that just has to happen. It's literally around the corner. Not going would be a crime against. . . burgers? I am not sure. A crime against someone anyway. Scott and Amy were my ride, so we arrived, drank some #9s, and headed over to meet Erica at the Church of Burgers. After a long wait (like 26 minutes), we got our table and menus, which were completely unnecessary. All 5 of us got various versions of the Blackjack Burger, which, if you recall, is currently the reigning burger champion. Also, we got more beer (I mean soda), which was probably not needed. At least some of it was Summer Ale.

The burger was as delicious as I remember, which is great since a lot of the time things end up being crappy when you try them again later. Like the movie Mighty Ducks? Remember that movie? Watch it again, and you will be incredibly disappointed.

Alright, I should probably end at this point. If the post doesn't make sense, we will just blame it on the fact that I am in quite a bit of pain after dropping a 60-lb weight on my foot this morning. That or the booze. Take your pick.

Editor's note - It is now the next night, and that dog ended up ruining a good night of sleep for at least 3 people. And I still have very little idea what I was trying to convey when I typed this up the first time. Apologies for that. I will (not) try harder in the future.

-Jon

All Sorts of Stories

Well, it's really only a couple stories, but they are fairly entertaining to me. Of course, I have the attention span and sense of humor of a 13-year old so that may explain a lot of it.

The annual birthday party of Nick took place yesterday, and it contained, among other things, grilled cheeseburgers. Or possibly grilled charcoal. Nick was a little bit intoxicated, so he may have possibly forgotten about the burgers for a while, which meant any burgers that were in the center of the grill looked a lot like Brillo pads. And I still ate two of them. I think I have a problem. . .

After eating those burger-like substances, I ended up getting into a few games of beer pong with James since either Nicole didn't want to play anymore or she was banned from the team for ineptitude. After a tough first game, we called for a rematch and things got real. We won the first game in fairly standard fashion, but it was game 2 that was truly impressive. In that game, we were able to both sink twice in a row (balls back!), and won the game in under 4 minutes. It was probably the greatest game of beer pong ever played (that night). Then we won a couple more games until things kind of wound down. Which leads to story number 2.

Nick has a pretty extensive bar in his (parents') basement. It's like being in an actual bar, just with better lighting. And I'm pretty sure this bar is the reason for the downfall of last night's beer pong, because after our last victory we found out that everyone was downstairs doing various shots. That's acceptable though, because shots are fun. The last one we ended up doing was a shot of absinthe, which I am fairly certain used to be illegal in the US. My guess is that it was banned because it is terrible. It was like bad licorice jelly beans, except the taste stays in your mouth. Plus I didn't even see any weird stuff like in Eurotrip. How silly.

Also, I am going to tell one more story even though it didn't happen last night, just because the main protagonist was at the party and that's good enough for me. Last week, or maybe the week before, or possibly sometime before that (the date is unimportant), we were at the Lighthouse enjoying a beer or 5 and just generally being silly. After a while, I decided it would be fun for Dan to talk to anyone around us, which ended up being a girl named Samantha. Despite all of Dan's charm, it just wasn't meant to be because after a while she finally told him that she had a boyfriend. His response was classic: "That's debatable." Since then, anything that is a fact we don't like has become debatable. Thanks, Dan.

-Jon

My Tire is Fixed

Being as it's summer and I have pretty much nothing important to do or places to go, the fact that I ran over a nail somewhere back in July was not enough of an impetus to actually get the tire fixed. Fast forward a couple weeks, and I was finally bored enough to take my car in. Turns out that nail holes near the sidewall are not fixable, which means I got to shell out lots of dollars to replace a tire with a small hole and tons of tread left. How fun.

Anyway, since Town Fair Tire is apparently the best tire place around because I was told it would be a couple hours until they replaced the tire. That is a long time, so I called Bill for a ride. Since it was about 2 or so, and Bill apparently gets up around 1, I was hungry for lunch and he was hungry for "breakfast." We went to Ruby Tuesday, which surprisingly has not changed its menu since the last time I was there. Must be a record!

I ate the Alpine Swiss burger, which was good. And super-juicy. It was like the thing had sprung a leak. I was amazed that one burger could result in that much liquid on the plate afterwards. Then I put my napkin in the excess juice so it would soak it up to play a joke on the waitress. It worked! My life is quite exciting.

-Jon

Probably Not New Jersey's Best Work . . .

This weekend was the big trip to Baltimore to see the Sox take on the lowly Orioles. First of all, Camden Yards is much too nice of a ballpark for a team like Baltimore to have. It's really not fair. Second of all, there is some sort of crazy outside drinking festival that apparently takes place after every game right across the street from the park. That was a fun time, mostly because James, Joe, Bill and myself decided to ask every guy who walked by if he had met Lindsay. If you haven't seen How I Met Your Mother, you won't get what was going on.

After having some gastrointestinal difficulties on Sunday morning (a burrito looks surprisingly similar coming back up as it does on its way down), I was really hungry by the time we were going home. The bus hit a rest stop somewhere in New Jersey, and our choices were Roy Rogers, Pizza Hut or Blimpie (which I am pretty sure was the cause of the vomiting from earlier in the day). I'm aware that Blimpie doesn't serve burritos, but I think the sandwich from Blimpie caused my stomach to reject the burrito I had for dinner. Regardless, I ended up choosing a bacon cheeseburger from Roy Rogers and then loading it up with tomatoes.

Boy was that a mediocre burger. Even with my incredibly low expectations, I was still disappointed. I have no idea where we were, but I hope we weren't in New Brunswick because that would mean I missed out on New Jersey's best burger.

On the plus side, the Sox won both games we attended, so we had that going for us. Which is nice.

-Jon

A Pre-Dinner Burger

After several days (or probably months) of mocking Melissa for not having seen The Big Lebowski (technically she saw part of it but made the unforgivable mistake of falling asleep during it), we finally scheduled a Lebowski-viewing and White Russian-drinking event at our house. Also, since some people can't order pizzas correctly, James took care of the ordering, meaning we actually got a buffalo chicken pizza from Palermo's as opposed to some weird chicken club pizza from Pinocchio's.

And I told you that story so I could tell you this one. Since the Lebowski showing wasn't occurring until around 8, I still decided that I could use a free dinner at Dad & Kelly's, which just happened to be cheeseburgers. Nice rare cheeseburgers. Sadly, there were no tomatoes, but that is not quite a deal breaker.

Of course the movie was again fantastic, just like the first 36 times* I've seen it. Also, I seem to go a little heavy on the Kahlua in my White Russians. We finished off the Kahlua bottle before the vodka even though there are supposed to be equal parts of each. Oops.

-Jon

*I have no idea how many times I've actually seen that movie. I would put the total well over 25 though.

The 3rd Annual Birthday Bash

For the 3rd straight year, Melissa's and my birthday celebration (which, yes, I know this is far in advance of my actual birthday) took place and was quite the festive occasion. Nice weather? Check. Keg of Summer Ale? Check. Cheeseburgers? Check. Five-layer taco dip? Hey, where'd those other 2 layers go??

It turned out that we got one of the only sunny days that have occurred in July, although it did pour last night. Or someone stood on the roof outside my bedroom window with a hose. I wasn't really paying close attention. After eating about half of the taco dip, I figured I would be good to go in the eating department until I saw some people wandering around with burgers. Clearly I needed to get my hands on one of those! A few minutes and a slice of pepper jack cheese and tomato later I was able to obtain a super greasy burger. And some pasta salad. I also was about to eat some jambalaya until I noticed the shrimp in there. Boy, would that have put a damper on the entire afternoon.

Eventually the mosquitoes took over the party, so things had to move inside before all our blood was taken by them. All in all it was a good time; now I just have to wait to see all the crazy pictures on Facebook of what REALLY happened.

-Jon

82

No burgers for me since my day at the Shake Shack, but I did stumble across New York's 82 Notable Burgers, which New York Magazine put up on their website last week. I've had a few of these burgers in my time here in New York, but it looks like I have my work cut out for me...



And lucky for me, there is a list of 16 more in Boston for me to check out when I'm at home. Maybe Jon can get a head start and fill me in on the good ones.

Another Trip to Northampton

This is starting to become a habit here; another week, another trip to Northampton. Of course, the original plan was to go to some music thing at the Summit House in South Hadley, so the fact that we ended up eating dinner in Northampton means that things clearly went wrong. We also ended up missing a chance at a new trivia night, but oh well. At least we got ice cream!

I guess Fitzwilly's has been around for a ridiculously long time (at least according my Mom and Chuck), but it was my first trip there. It was also long overdue, because they had a great menu with like 50 different things. Not that it really mattered, since the only thing I planned on ordering was a cheeseburger. I went for the Jack and Muenster Burger. The sauce was some kind of Jack Daniel's sauce, and it was fantastic. Also, it turns out that muenster is a highly underrated cheese. Throw some tomato and a slice of red onion on there and you've got a winning burger.

They've also got pretty good french fries. And mashed potatoes. Which I stole from Chuck after they accidently gave him fries instead of his mashed potatoes and then when they brought them later he was no longer interested. That was kind of a long story without much of a point. I guess in the end I would go back there since they had so many other things to try, but I am still pro-Paradise City as far as burgers in Northampton are concerned.

Now it feels like time for a nap. We'll see how that goes.

Just Pretend This Went Up Sunday

Oops, I forgot. The second run of cookouts at Jen & Melissa's was on Sunday in preparation for the actual birthday party coming up. There were a lot of similarities between this cookout and the last one. Most of the same people, lots of Summer Ale, nice weather, etc. There was one major difference, which was that this time we didn't put any of the bottles in the pool after we finished. I did try to throw them all on the lawn though (with help from Bill, Joe and James), because that is just fun.

We had burgers again, even though Melissa tried to ruin them by not letting Nicky put bleu cheese inside them because she claimed that some people might not like bleu cheese. Now this in and of itself is pretty much unacceptable, but I think it would be possible to maybe put the cheese inside some of the burgers and not others. Apparently her one-third* sized woman brain could not come up with this on her own. Unfortunately, the burgers were already formed by the time I had arrived and I could not correct this grievous error.

The burgers were probably good, but it's been several days since I ate it and I can't remember for sure. It's also possible that I ate 2 of them, but who can say. I am fairly certain that there was not bacon, but even that remains a mystery. I guess from now on I should take care of these things in a more timely fashion.

-Jon

*This is from Anchorman before all you women-folk fly off the handle.

The Unexpected Lunch Burger

After a long break, it was yet again burger time. This one was unexpected because the original plan was to go to Joy's for lunch, which in itself was unexpected as Joy's is a breakfast tradition. Regardless, somehow we ended up at Ruby Tuesday's instead since Joy's entire staff is currently on vacation. Or maybe just Joy is on vacation and refuses to open the place. This is not really on topic.

I don't know when the last time I was at Ruby Tuesday's was, but they have changed their menus again (for what I can only imagine is the 19th time in the past 6 years) and potentially had new burgers. It was a toss-up between the Boston Blue Burger (hooray alliteration!) and the Blackened Fish "Burger," but after an extremely short internal debate I went with the 3 B's. Hey, the sauce had Boston Lager in it and I'm a sucker for Sam Adams.

Surprisingly, everything about the burger was good except the blue cheese. I know, I'm as shocked as you are. It was some crumbled bleu cheese thing, but it just wasn't that great. I knocked a bunch of it off, which made everything better. Also, I guess they redid their fries since they weren't covered with 14 tablespoons of salt. That is good news! Plus, my burger was made with real cow, unlike Kathryn and James' burgers. This helped me avoid the wrath of Matt, who apparently only allows meat burgers (good choice there, as evidenced by my first posting ever).

In other news, I may be in Boston this weekend depending on if Alex's possible concussion lets him remember he's supposed to let me know tomorrow. That may result in another Blackjack Burger (the current champion) and other beer-related shenanigans. How exciting! Although in all honesty, I am hoping I eat at least one more burger before then.

-Jon

Saturday in the Park

Nothing says summer in Manhattan to me more than spending a sunny Saturday afternoon in Madison Square Park at my favorite (so far) NYC burger establishment, the Shake Shack (www.shakeshacknyc.com). The original Shake Shack stands at the southeast corner of what is, for my money, one of New York’s prettiest parks (there are also locations in the Upper West Side and the Mets’ CitiField). Despite being a strictly outdoor eatery, Shake Shack is open year-round and, in nice weather, the line to order can stretch a full city block. That is exactly what happened on Saturday, when after weeks and weeks of seemingly never-ending rain, I was finally able to meet up with a couple of friends to spend one of the first sunny weekend days of the summer outside. From the looks of it, the wait would be about 45-50 minutes long, but fortunately, for me, I’ve been to the Shake Shack more times than I can count, so I was prepared and ready to wait.

Time waiting to order passed quickly and about an hour after getting in line, we were sitting down with our burgers at one of the tables provided by the city’s Parks department. Much to Jon’s dismay, I’m sure, I refuse to eat burgers with tomatoes on them (hate tomatoes – HATE them). It takes away from what the burger is all about, I say. And while I won’t flat out put mayonnaise on my burger, I may use a mayonnaise-based sauce as a topper (ie, Shack Sauce). So, I ordered a plain cheeseburger, fries, an Arnold Palmer to drink, and a side of homemade Shack Sauce (for both the burger and the fries). On the outside, it’s a run-of-the-mill looking burger, but it’s so much more tasty. It’s made fresh every day of half ground sirloin / half brisket – very juicy and flavorful. I topped the meal off with a peanut butter sundae (Shake Shack also makes EXCELLENT frozen custard – I don’t know what frozen custard actually is, except that it is completely delicious).

My cousin and her boyfriend came down to the city on Saturday and got in line for a burger as I was finishing my sundae. He was a first-timer and after his burger, told me that it was definitely worth the 45-minute wait. All in all, great day spent at the park with good food and friends. I’m sure the Shack Shack hasn’t seen the last of me this summer. And, of course, I’ll try to fit some other burger places in, too!

Maybe it was foreshadowing?

Well, that took a lot less time than I expected. I think it was probably Monday that I mentioned Paradise City Tavern as being a better choice than Local Burger and then today I ended up eating a delicious burger there. (I could easily check this, but that seems like a lot of work, and if it wasn't Monday I will just go back and edit this post anyway so no one will be the wiser. Unless someone screen shots this, but that is wicked nerdy. Wow, I am way off track.)

This time I tried the BBQ Burger, because I was supposed to eat it last time but then I got sidetracked by something with bacon on it. There's probably a post about it back in February somewhere. Today's burger was crazy. Besides the burger itself, there was some pulled-pork, some onion rings, a slice of gouda cheese (highly underrated as a cheese), and the standard lettuce, tomato and onion. Red onion actually. Nice work, Paradise City. Also, by my estimate (backed up by Kathryn), the entire thing was between 3 and 4 inches tall. I felt like one of those snakes (boa constrictor maybe?) trying to unhinge my jaw to make it fit.

What a great burger. I will hopefully be eating another one soon. That pulled pork really got the job done. They also had good fries (again), which really gives them the edge over any other nearby burger joints. Local Burger, I'm looking at you! Also at the Dirty Truth, but just because Paradise City is so clearly superior. At this rate, I will have eaten at all the Northampton burger places by the end of the year.

-Jon

The Sequel

It would appear that 6 pounds of meat was more than the ten of us could eat on Friday, which meant leftovers! Luckily, James was on top of his game so he didn't cook the extra meat, but wrapped it up raw for future consumption. This resulted in the leftover burgers being as good as the originals (like Back to the Future II) and not incredibly disappointing (like every American Pie movie after the theater ones).

After a long day consisting of watching the Red Sox, drinking a few Summer Ales, halfway doing laundry and stealing a hammock (with full documentation, NOT by Kathryn. . .), James fired up the grill, I sliced up some veggies and Kathryn. . . relaxed? Regardless, we had some more fantastic burgers. Then we moved the hammock into the living room. That has nothing to do with anything, but I think it's a funny image. Those things seem much larger inside than they do outside.

Tomorrow is apparently hammock returning day, which is sad. But there's always a chance of another burger, which would make the loss easier to take.

-Jon