Up until this point, the concept of “Burger Porn” has rested cheekily in the realm of tasteful erotica, presenting images of oozy cheese and juicy patties, but easily staying PG-13. Titillating? Sure. Mouth-watering? Obviously. Tongue-in-cheek, grain-of-salt guiltless fun. But I haven’t reached full-on smut.
I need to do something about that.
Immediately after eating the Big Mac-inspired cheeseburger at Scena Tavern, the only obvious place to go was literally across the street to the McDonalds for a Big Mac. On my way in, however, I came across the “McPick 2” deal, and remembered something bigger, and bolder than a Big Mac for half the price, and a vile grin spread across my face.
“Fuck the Big Mac,” I told my companions. “I’m getting a McGangbang*.”
This is the post I don’t want my mother to see. Hi, Mom.
Secret menus are a simple way to get the most out of your favorite fast food restaurant by taking ingredients they already have to turn their regular menu items into unique masterpieces. Some are so ubiquitous they get their own names. The “Quesarito“, for instance, is a Chipotle burrito on a quesadilla in stead of a boring tortilla. The secret menu is so well known at In-N-Out Burger, that they list some of the most popular menu variations on their website. Did you know you can swap in grilled onions on any McDonald’s sandwich at no extra charge? Now you do.
Its origin is unclear, but the McGangbang first appeared on the internet in 2006 and gained popularity in 2008. The premise is simple: you take one McChicken and put it in the middle of a McDouble. I’d never had one before. Feeling extra frisky, I ordered both sandwiches with extra Special Sauce. I meant in stead of the ketchup and mustard on the McDouble and the mayo on the McChicken but didn’t make this clear and got charged for the sauce, but this was fine. Very, very fine.
I pulled up to a table and unwrapped both sandwiches. The McDouble I peeled apart at the cheese, right between the two patties, and laid the McChicken–in full–on the bottom half, and replaced the top half of the burger on top. Voila.
The sear’s weak, the seasoning’s good, not enough cheese, essential bun-squish, nice crunch on the chicken, kind of a fantastic amount of total sauce, to be honest, a bit of crisp from the lettuce, nice acid from the pickles, zip from the special sauce, but mostly it tasted like McDonald’s, which is exactly what it needed to taste like. This sandwich is so elemental it’s ridiculous. It’s a literal mashup of two of the most iconic sandwiches in the world, and that’s exactly what it fucking tastes like, and I’m totally extremely happily “Loving It” for all of the chemicals, additives, preservatives, GMOs, and passive voice that go along with that trademarked phrase.
Nostalgia-wise, McDonalds is my ultimate platonic ideal of a cheeseburger, for the simple fact that I can walk into any McDonalds in the entire world and it’ll taste exactly how it’s supposed to, every single time. You cannot fake that. It’s what they do best. They drilled the concept into me via shitty toys, and I shall continue to drink that Kool-Aid so long as I shall live. I’ve eaten far superior burgers than McDonalds, but when I get that specific itch, there’s only one scratch for it.
Right now, Mom’s regretting every Happy Meal she ever bought me.
Each sandwich was $1 and the extra sauce was $.25 each, for a total of $2.50. A Big Mac is $3.99. Math.
I don’t think I’ve eaten at McDonald’s since Burger Fetish started, but I really liked this carnival sideshow act because I really like McDonalds. I’m not going to recommend it–you either want one or you don’t–and while reading this might be fun, I don’t think I’ve swayed anyone in either direction. No one’s taking another chance on McDonald’s after reading this either; you’ve made your mind up on the restaurant before you started reading this. So what am I doing here? Why’d I write this? Why’d I eat a McGangbang?
Because I eat fucking burgers and talk about them. This is my life.
*A word on the awkward name, just in case. A “gangbang” is a group performing sex acts on one consenting person, simultaneously or in turn. Not to be confused with an orgy in which a group of participants engages freely in sexual acts with one another. My consumption of a sandwich named after this act is neither endorsement nor disapproval; what consenting adults do with a group of other consenting adults is their business. “Gang rape” is a nonconsensual act that’s absolutely wrong, should never be done, is never funny, and I’d never eat a sandwich named after it. Clear? Good.
The cheeseburger came out and on appearance immediately gave away its inspiration: 
The beef’s well-seasoned and the flavor is definitely good, but there was too much chew. I admire the effort of a house-made bun, but always find myself disappointed. No restaurant can make a squishy enough bun, and if you’re trying to recreate a classic, you need a squishy bun, and this was simply too much bread. Three quarters of the way through, the bread should be reduced to a near-tortilla, but it remained intact and bready as fuck. Flavor-wise, the burger’s an on-point facsimile, but texturally, it misses the mark. Between the overwhelming bun and the too-tough patty, I’m not a fan of this burger.
At the 5-8, you can get your Lucy stuffed with American, blue, Swiss, or pepperjack. I, obviously, went American. I misunderstood the server’s question and ordered mine without fried onions, which I’ll admit is a misstep, especially when it comes to a fair comparison. Otherwise, the only topping was pickles on a notably less-than-squishy bun. The patty arrived relatively medium-well, still pretty juicy with basically no sear, but well-seasoned. This leads me to believe they don’t keep their griddle cranked the fuck up like most burger joints. Lucys are traditionally cooked through to ensure the cheese melts thoroughly, and keeping the griddle at a more moderate temperature makes sure the meat doesn’t dry out, which I respect, but as I learned in New York at 
Ordering burgers at every damn restaurant in town starts to make you feel like a basic bitch.
It was a good burger, though. Dry aged beef, grilled to a perfect medium rare. lettuce, onion, homemade pickles, homemade sesame seed bun. Cheddar, which I traditionally object to, worked in being well-melted and tasty. The bun was good, and while not quite squishy enough, there’s something about a thick patty with a more dense bun that screams pub burger in a way that just feels good. It isn’t rewriting any book on the burger, but it’s good, solid, and apparently available ’til 3am if you’re into drunk snacks–I know I am! I liked it.
First and foremost, it’s a sirloin patty stuffed with braised short rib, black truffle, and foie gras, on a spread of tomato confit and a bed of frisée lettuce, topped with raw onion, tomato, and a spread of horseradish on a parmesan poppy seed bun.
This was a case where it seems like someone told them they had to put a burger on the menu, and they didn’t know what that was and someone described a burger to them and they made one based on that. But it was gross so they decided to do something a little zany and Greek it up a bit with some unique choices, and it was still gross, but they went with it because they had to.
Mom and Dad left early on Sunday morning, my last day in town, so Anna and I were free to brunch it up how we pleased, so I picked 
Dry-aged beef with a gorgeous amber sear cooked to a delightful medium-rare, coated in cheddar, drenched in “EMMY sauce” that’s unlike any ketchup-mayo-pickle “secret” sauce I’ve sampled, on a pretzel bun from local bakery 
And enjoy it I did! What I loved about the ShackBurger is still present in the SmokeShack: a smash-imparted sear and American. But while I thought I was mostly just adding bacon, a cherry pepper relish really brought the SmokeShack home. It adds heat, for sure, but I didn’t anticipate it all coming together so fucking well. Acid balances the added fat, and spice complements the smokiness. It all killed the tang of the ShackSauce, and maybe I’d feel like it was missing something without it, but I didn’t notice it. Whatever it is, I really liked this burger.
The burger is a reinterpretation of a 
And I don’t know what it was, but it missed the mark. Maybe because I’d come straight from Raoul’s flavor bomb and should have gone for a bolder creation than the American-cheese-secret-sauce standard, but that’s what I wanted. The patty could have used some seasoning, for sure. The sear was good, I liked how the bun picked up some beef juice on the griddle, but on the whole it was just bland. I popped some ketchup for dipping purposes, but was ultimately just disappointed. This was a burger that I’d heard some good stuff about, and I don’t know. It needed some salt. It needed some flavor.
This burger is fantastic. The patty was cooked medium-rare, to order, and had a characteristic sweetness and a supreme tenderness to it that I absolutely loved. There’s almost no chew to it, which I’d normally protest, but it that wasn’t the point here. I’d read that the Roquefort cheese was 
Anna got a margherita pizza and I got the lunch-only burger. It’s a hefty dry-aged beef patty, griddled and topped with American cheese on top of a full slice of raw onion with pickles and romaine lettuce on yet another Martin’s potato roll with a side of smashed fingerling potatoes. The sear is good, it’s well-seasoned, the cheese is gooey and yummy and blah-blah-blah-I-love-American-cheese, pickles for balance, the romaine was forgettable but fine. But beyond just making an extremely excellent well-balanced burger, the innovation here is putting raw onion on the bottom. I like onion, but your options are basically to put it on raw which gives it that bite, in which case you can only do a couple of rings lest you want all bite, or a pile of caramelized, which have fantastic flavor–it draws out that sweetness–but no bite. Roberta’s found that middle ground, where they put an entire slice of raw onion under the beef, where incidental heat from the patty cooks it just slightly, mellowing out the bite without killing it entirely. That’s the trick. For an onion-lover like me who feels torn when asked if he wants 
Louis Lassen opened a food cart in 1886 selling eggs and butter, then added lunch items to his repertoire in 1895, including steak. According to legend, in 1900, at a customer’s request for a quick lunch to eat on the go, he put some ground steak trimmings on sliced bread and thereby invented the hamburger. He moved the whole operation into the building pictured above in 1917, and they’ve been cranking out burger patties on sliced bread ever since.
Burger Fetish 