Okay, I'll buy that.

Now, one might make the erroneous assumption that because I find Burger King hamburgers not just palatable but much preferable to other fast-food hamburgers is because I really don't know much about the full range of hamburger quality, and that I can't really recognize a bad hamburger when I encounter one. Well, in the article I posted above, I think I've indicated fairly well that I do know a good—really good—hamburger when I encounter one. Anyone who ate at the Hasty Tasty or Bob Murray's Doghouse may denigrate them as a matter of humor (such as referring to the Hasty Tasty as the "Nasty Tasty"), or some sort of pseudo-sophisticated pose, denigrating hamburgers in general because they much prefer filet mignon (well, who wouldn't? But, of course, they can't afford it). In any case, the verdict of nutritionists that I have cited above cannot simply be dismissed if one wants to be realistic about the matter.

I do indeed know really bad hamburgers. I have faced the very nadir of hamburgerdom

While going through my files, I encountered a section of the article I posted above which I had excised from the article on the advise of a friend of mine who was worried about the possibility of a libel suit because I tended to be a bit unkind about the fare served by the Boeing food service when I worked at Billy Boeing's Kite Factory some decades ago. Well, in those intervening decades, the food service, an independent outside contractor, not an actual division of the Boeing Airplane Company, has gone out of business. "How strange," I say to myself, with a wry smile. Besides, a plaintiff can make a charge of libel stick only if it can be proven that what the defendant wrote was untrue. And even at this late date, I'm quite sure I could find many witnesses to substantiate the veracity of what I wrote.

And what I wrote lies just below. In the original draft, it was between when I returned from Denver and my discussion of Bob Murray's Doghouse.
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               I worked as a production illustrator for the Boeing Airplane Company from January 1966 to March 1970. I quickly learned to bring my own lunch rather than rely on the food service Boeing contracted.
               First, you had to stand in line, sometimes for most of the forty minutes that Boeing allowed you for lunch. Often, by the time you finally got past the cash register, you had to eat on the run, dashing back to your drawing table before the whistle blew.
               Second, there was the food itself. The sandwiches had been stored under refrigeration for Lord knows how long, and the fillings -egg salad, tuna salad, chicken salad, ham and cheese, whatever -all had that same flat "I've recently been chipped out of a 250,000-year-old glacier" flavor, and the bread tasted like soggy cardboard. There were small bags of things like potato chips, tortilla chips, and cheese puffs; and dessert items like Twinkies, Ho-Hos, and cupcakes, and a selection of candy bars; but everything was overpriced.
               Of course, one could opt for a hamburger. But I wouldn't advise it.
               The hamburgers were laid out in neat rows in the drawer of a large stainless steel warming oven whose heat was provided by flickering pale blue flames from several cans of Sterno. Each hamburger was packaged in a waxed paper sandwich bag. Beads of greasy moisture cling to the inside of the waxed paper. This was why people called them "sweatburgers."
               They were plain:   patty and bun only. The patties were oddly uniform. About three and a half inches in diameter and half an inch thick; as precisely disk shaped and sharp edged as a hockey puck, they looked like they'd all been sawed off the same cylinder. They may well have been. They were covered with small, gray bubbles and greasy globules.
               Any condiments you wanted, you had to add yourself, but mustard and ketchup were all that was available. First, you discovered that you had to shake the nearly empty containers and coax the contents to come out. Then you found yourself holding up a line of rushed and very impatient co-workers as you stood there making rude noises with plastic squeeze bottles.
               Despite its precise appearance and crisp looking edges, when you bit into it, the tactile feedback was all wrong. Your teeth and jaws met little or no resistance. There was no sensation of your teeth breaking through the soft crust of a fresh bun, none of the firm but yielding substance characteristic of a hamburger patty. It was like biting into a mush sandwich.
               I theorize that this lack of cohesion had two causes:
               First, the meat. It was undoubtedly some inexpensive commercial hamburger mix, further diluted with a mixture of cereal or stale bread crumbs and a small quantity of chopped onion. There may have been other ingredients, but sometimes it's best not to inquire.
               Second, this meat-flavored mush-cake obviously held together adequately enough while it was being cooked and placed in the bun. But then, the assembled sandwich was wrapped in a waxed paper bag and placed in the drawer of a warming oven. There, it resided for an indefinite period while it basted itself in its own grease.
               How did it taste? You don't want to know.
               One of these was enough. I started bringing my lunch.

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Respectfully submitted for your amusement and amazement.

Don Firth