By Elliott Brack, editor and publisher | You’ve heard of people with “big mouths.” That’s often referring to people who talk too much on numerous subjects, some seeming to go on and on.
We’re thinking of “big mouths” in a different, more literal sense.
It’s what the nation’s fast-food chefs seem to cater to, people who can open their mouths superwide so as to consume the enormous hamburgers that the chefs are cooking up.
These burgers are huge, some four and five inches high. How in the world do they expect us to reasonably eat them? After all, most mouths don’t open that wide or high enough to chomp into a burger that big!
Yet these super-chefs seem to take fatter than usual buns, cook the fatty hamburger itself an inch and a half thick, then pile on a thick slices of tomato and onion plus lettuce. Some top the burger with cheese or bacon or even some local ingredient, and offer it to you sensing that you approve all this cooking engineering.
We don’t approve.
Not only that, but we would like for these chefs to show us how they expect us to eat this monster. It’s difficult in polite society. One way is to go at it sideways, but even then you can’t fit the thickness of the entire bun, hamburger and ingredients sufficiently into your mouth. Better for us, discard at least one half of the bun, and tackle with knife and fork.
When looking at these monster hamburgers, we easily think that the term one chain uses, the “whopper,” is fitting. They are difficult to attack. Chefs of the major changes see benefit in adding not only one, but sometimes two, additional patties to further the appeal (and height) to customers. Ugh!
Some chains adopt other more reasonable tactics in attracting hamburger customers.
There’s Krystal, that small hamburger chain that we remember back to our childhood when their hamburgers sold for a dime. (That was in the days when a quarter would get your two Krystals, plus a Coke, and that was lunch. There was no sales tax back then, either, so it was simply a quarter.) The “Krystal Koncept” is based on the customer ordering multiple sandwiches of a smaller size in order to have a full meal, not ordering one gigantic sandwich. For years, Krystal (and White Castle) have prospered on this philosophy, not changing their formula or design of their burger. Bigger, then seem to say, is not necessarily better.
Back to the chefs cooking up these big burgers.
If anyone needs to be singled out for our girth in American, it’s probably these chefs. Most burger chefs apparently think not once of health issues of Americans when they are planning their menus. They add ingredients that appeal to people’s baser instincts, wanting immediate satisfaction when hungry. And for these chefs, this translates tantalizing customers seeing a larger patty, cooked to a thick dimension, adding on extras that build in height to make customers reading the menu and seeing the picture of this fat burger, say “Oh, that’s what I want!” Meanwhile, the hunger and churning stomach says, “That’s right, boss, send that my way and I’ll be satisfied.”
So we order the big sandwich, forgetting for the moment that it’ll be difficult to eat.
It’s the body outvoting the mind that the chefs understand.
Expect more larger, taller innovative burgers from our chefs of America. They’re aiming for our immediate gratification, our big mouths and growing bellies.
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