Stan's Wagon Wheel in Sikeston, Missouri, is offering a 7-pound "Frankenstein" burger for free, plus a $100 prize, if the customer can eat the whole thing in one sitting under an hour. The $20 burger only contains four pounds of meat, but the 14-inch buns, condiments, and fries add up to seven. The restaurant isn't about to go bankrupt from this challenge; only one person has completed it. "I didn't make it impossible for someone, but I think it's going to take an awfully skinny person to do it," said owner Frank Stanley.
The pricey burger is for charity, and it's only available in one Burger King in West London once a week. Here's what it's made up of:
The fine ingredients of what is called simply 'The Burger' include Wagyu beef, white truffles, Pata Negra ham slices, Cristal onion straws, Modena balsamic vinegar, lambs lettuce, pink Himalayan rock salt, organic white wine and shallot infused mayonnaise in an Iranian saffron and white truffle dusted bun.
The Forbes Traveler has an article on America's most expensive burgers. It features the Wall Street Burger Shoppe burger that Adam mentioned earlier this week as well as the famous short rib–truffle-stuffed creation by Daniel Boulud. But most outrageous, and by a mile, is the $5,000 burger from Fleur de Lys in Las Vegas. And I thought the Kobe burger at the Old Homestead Steakhouse, which is no longer available and which sold for $81, was expensive. So burger lovers, what's the most you have ever paid for a burger? Was it worth it?
Not the $175 burger. But if this regular burger at Burger Shoppe is any indication, you don't want to throw down for the most expensive burger in New York.
The Richard Nouveau - from the Wall Street Burger Shoppe, natch - comes topped with a blizzard of real gold flakes, plus 25 grams of black truffles, a seared slab of foie gras and an aged Gruyere typically reserved for a high-class cheese tray.
I guess the "Richard Nouveau" is the burger's name—in line with the menu-name conventions there. I don't know, though. Given the regular burger I had there in late March, I don't think I'd be ponying up $1.75 let alone $175. It's made with ten ounces of Kobe beef.
If last week's post on Paula Deen's Lady's Brunch Burger was the latest in our P.D.I.T.T.K.U. franchise, then this post is like the director's cut released only on DVD. It's the Big Mike Burger, and it consists of not one, but TWO DIFFERENT PATTIES, all double-teamed Big Mac–stilo on a triple-decker bun. And one of them IS A BUTTER BURGER! (The other patty incorporates chopped pecans.)
This stuff is amazing. When a burger recipe lists subheadings for "Patty #1" and "Patty #2," you know you're heading into seriously uncharted waters. I can't wait to see what kind of burgery Ms. Deen gets up to next.
On Serious Eats, we've got a bit of a running joke about all the ways in which Food Network superstar Paula Deen is trying to kill us (see P.D.I.T.T.K.U. Parts 1, 2, and 3). Introducing the Lady's Brunch Burger, her doughnut-bun burger. Sure, we've championed doughnut burgers on A Hamburger Today before, and Ms. Paula's isn't all that much different:
Sandwiched between sticky glazed doughnuts? Check.
Bacon? Check.
But the Lady steps it over the top by adding ... a FRIED EGG!
Here, he complains that the Monster Thickburger (right) was too much to fit in his mouth:
Success was not mine, for as the irresistible force (M.T.) met the immovable object (my face), my grip failed. In one seamless, slo-mo movement, patty slipped across patty, mayo oozed, bacon flopped floorward, bun split, and the entire construction crumbled.
What I salvaged was divine—in the most disgusting way. Well-seasoned beef, appropriately gooey cheese, remarkably crispy bacon, fresh roll. Too big by half for mortal stomachs but perfect for extreme eaters. Less fulfilling, alas, was the Philly Cheese Steak Thickburger, a gilded lily that piles cheesesteak fixings—undercooked onions and shaved beef that gets stuck between your teeth—atop the burger mountain.
Other burgers reviewed in his article include the Carl's Jr. Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger ("sagged under its own weight"), Wendy's Baconator ("bacon was limp and the cheese unmelted"), and Burger King's BK Stacker ("even the four-story Stacker is disappointingly compact and too greasy").
Five pounds of burger, broken down into 10 half-pound patties. And that's before you add the bacon and cheese (20 slices of each). And the five-pound sider of fries.
$100. Finish it and you don't have to pay. [Tip o' the hat to: Mark L.]
Last year the stadium served "The Grizzly Burger," a bacon cheeseburger served on a toasted Krispy Kreme doughnut.
This year, they're raising the bar with deep-fried White Castle sliders. Called "Baseball’s Best Sliders," they'll come two for $4. A side of cheese sauce is $1 extra.
Says Darren Rovell, the man who broke the Grizzly Burger story last year, "It’s pretty awesome when it has been sitting in the studio for an hour. I can only imagine how great it is hot out of the fryer sitting at the ballpark. I couldn’t eat too much being that I’m down a gallbladder, but it basically tastes like an onion ring burger."
On deck: Baseball road trip!
Further Reading
I'm not sure where to place this post, so read more about Megaburgers on AHT or about Tiny Hamburgers!
In a stunning turn of events that may shake the very foundations of burgerological anthropology, A Hamburger Today has been presented with credible new evidence that the first burger to use a Krispy Kreme doughnut as a bun may have evolved almost two years earlier than previously thought.
AHT reader Timm just piped in in the Comments on our post about the Gateway Grizzlie Burger, the Krispy Kreme–bunned bacon cheeseburger served at the stadium of independent league baseball team the Gateway Grizzlies: "Just thought I'd throw out there that it seems the original idea for the Krispy Kreme burger can be found here and is referred to as the Fat Kreme back in 2003. Either way, that's a heart attack on a bun/doughnut!"
The Grizzlie Burger, which appeared in spring 2006, was itself a take-off of the Luther Burger, an invention of Decatur, Georgia, pub Mulligan's that dates to early 2005.
Dubbed the Fat Kreme, this early version of fusion-burger excess places the contents of a Fatburger burger onto the aforementioned sugar-glazed treat on April 6, 2003. What's more, this new evidence moves the locus of the mashup from the South to Seattle, a geographic region known more for its advances in coffee culture than for its contributions to calorie-rich deep-fried dining.
Unconfirmed reports within the blog post in question hint at an even earlier version of the KK-burger mashup, but using In-N-Out burgers instead.
Burger anthropologists in AHT's research department were puzzled as to why, like the Neanderthals, the Fat Kreme was suddenly eclipsed by a similar species. But at least one leading researcher who requested anonymity said he believed it had to do with the fact that Yukino, the blogger who invented the Fat Kreme, placed the doughnut bun facing glazed side out. The more advanced Grizzlie Burger, in contrast, has an evolutionary advantage in the fact that its toasted-doughnut bun faces glazed side inward, giving its eater a nonsticky fingerhold.
Posted by Adam Kuban, February 22, 2007 at 4:26 PM
Yesterday I showed you a series of photos, taken by my friend Listmaker, of my friend Marc as Marc had his first couple bites of the exotic Krispy Kreme Bacon Cheeseburger at an independent league baseball game last year. At the time the photos were taken, I told him, "Marc: I want a write-up of your experience for AHT. Stat!" Well, it only took seven months, but I guess yesterday's post was all the kick in the pants he needed.
Today, he responds: "You've gone and posted my mug all over your hamburger website. That means I finally looked over the draft of the Grizzlie Burger review. I fixed it up a bit. Sorry I didn't send this to you last summer!"
No problem, Marc. The important thing is that we have your story now, to warm our hearts on a cold winter day. Burgermeisters, dig in!
In March of last year, A Hamburger Today referenced a press release from the Gateway Grizzlies, an independent league baseball team from Sauget, Illinois. The team had created the Grizzlie Burger (known elsewhere as the Luther Burger). I couldn't help but refer to it as "that Krispy Kreme burger." It's a bacon cheeseburger served on a glazed Krispy Kreme doughnut instead of a traditional bun.
Later, in summer of last year, a friend and I took a baseball road trip through the Midwest. When I realized the Gateway Grizzlies played a few miles southeast of the Saint Louis Cardinals, one of the teams we'd included on our trek, I insisted that GCS Ballpark be included on the itinerary. It soon became the one destination that couldn't be altered. On the evening of Sunday, July 2, 2006, Listmaker and I walked into the Grizzlies' stadium at the start of the second inning—thankfully not too late to try the burger I hadn't stopped talking about during the previous month. [He really was talking about this burger a lot at the time.—Ed.]
I'd visited my parents. Me: A friend and I are going on a baseball trip to major, minor, and independent league games, and we're going to... Mom (interrupting): "Are you going to try that hamburger I saw on the news? The one with the Krispy Kreme bun?" Me: "Of course! You heard about that? Wow!"
I'd asked for time off at work. Me: I'm going to try a bacon cheeseburger with a sliced-open Krispy Kreme doughnut serving as the bun. Co-worker (visibly disturbed at the thought): Eww, gross. Wait: You don't eat cheeseburgers. Me: I know. I might make an exception. Or, maybe they'll serve it without cheese. I hope they serve it without cheese. [Marc likes cheese, and he likes burgers. He doesn't like cheese on his burgers, however. Go figure. —Ed.]
Basically, I had mentioned this burger to everyone I knew. It's a food item you can't resist talking about. How is it prepared? What does it taste like? Beef and sugar? Together? Is that sane? Is that possible?
Word of this burger just came across the wire here at AHT HQ. It's on Jason Perlow's blog, Off the Broiler. A friend of his, caterer Christine Nunn, had a burger at Epcot Center recently—one with plenty of toppings: tomato confit, mushroom duxelles, onion jam, and bernaise sauce. She decided to make the burger her own, with some improvements. For one, she cooks hers to medium-rare instead of the well-done that Epcot reportedly mandates.
According to Mr. Perlow, "she wants to open up more space for a restaurant and serve those every day!"
For the madness in painstaking detail, click on through to Mr. Perlow's site!
Update: Mr. Perlow says, "Can you believe she charged $7.50 for that thing?!? They would charge at least $15 in New York City." Ms. Nunn's operation is located in Emerson, New Jersey.
AHT readers know about The Counter, the SoCal burger joint where you build your own burger using a checklist (right). Most readers would probably never consider checking EVERYTHING on the damn list, though.
The resulting burger is pictured above. Yes: That's a burger. (I thought it was an ice cream sundae when I first clicked to this page.) The gargantuan behemoth monstrosity cost dude about $84 pretax. Here's a rundown of what those greenbacks bought:
Now how many toppings does this burger have? FIFTY-FOUR. We're talking more than the number of states in the US. That's 10 types of cheese, 27 toppings, and 17 sauces. And oh yeah, a 1 lb beef patty with a honey wheat bun. For anyone who's ever gone through a drive-thru window at a fast-food joint and joked, "Let's order every single item on the menu!" this is pretty much the same thing...."
GIO Address: 1725 Market Street; Halifax, Nova Scotia [map] Phone: 902-425-1987 Website:giohalifax.com The Skinny: $15 Kobe-style-beef burgers
As a non-native New Yorker, I still experience sticker shock here and there when I go about my daily business. The price of pizza has never fazed me, but burgers took some getting used to. With fancypants burgers routinely ringing in above $12 (sometimes WAY above), it's downright quaint to see a columnist from Halifax, Nova Scotia, marveling at a $15 Kobe-style-beef burger:
Next time you are in the mood for a hamburger, try Halifax 's real home of the whopper — Gio.
"Everybody enjoys a hamburger, but I wasn't just going to do a burger," said chef Ray Bear, whose $15 Kobe Long Burger is the highest priced burger Spare no Expense was able to find in the city....
[Bear] serves the six-ounce burger on a multi-grain bun, with double smoked bacon, aged cheddar, pickled red onions, and homemade ketchup made from dried apricots and cranberries. It comes with a side of crisp, sweet potato french fries. The pan-seared and oven-baked meat literally crumbles in your mouth, mixing with the smoky flavour of the bacon, sweet tanginess of the ketchup, and sharpness of the cheese. It tastes brilliant.
As of today (August 21, 2006), $15 Canadian translates to US$13.41. Maybe I should move AHT corporate HQ to Canada. I've always liked the sound of Halifax.
At about 5 1/2 inches across and 2 1/2 inches thick, the mound of meat is comprised of beef from three continents American prime beef, Japanese Kobe and Argentine cattle.
The bill for one burger, with garnishing that includes organic greens, exotic mushrooms and tomatoes, comes out to $124.50 with tax and an 18 percent tip included. The restaurant will donate $10 from each sale to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
The burger is available at the recently opened Boca Raton branch of the Old Homestead Steak House: 501 E. Camino Real, Boca Raton FL 33431 [map]
Well, today we go from news of a megaburger to news of mega burger-eaters:
A good sumo wrestler can earn a couple hundred thousand dollars a season, but you need money like that to pay for your food.
"Ten double cheeseburgers and a couple drinks -- in one meal, one sitting. Then a half hour later eat again," said Onipaa Paaaina, Professional Sumo Wrestler.
Foxwoods Executive Sous Chef Scott Ferguson made the world's largest commercially available hamburger Thursday -- weighing 29.6 pounds and costing $250 -- for the Fuddruckers restaurant in the casino. Guinness World Records verified the result. The burger is 18.5 inches wide and 8 inches tall.
Yes, there have been bigger burgers (see our Megaburgers Archive), but this is the first commercially available burger—meaning it's not a one-off and you can actually buy (and, um, try to eat) one.
The Norwich Bulletin reports how to get one:
The burger will be about 25 pounds including bun and toppings. The customer can select any toppings Fuddruckers offers.
Fuddruckerswill only serve the burger well done.
The burger must be ordered at least 48 hours in advance and costs $250. Call 1-800-FOXWOODS and ask for Fuddruckers.
At A Hamburger Today, we can't help but focus on burgers of unusual size. Whether it's a megaburger or a tiny one, we just can't turn away. Thus, Pimp My Snack.
Pimp My Snack is a site dedicated to creating oversized versions of everyday foods. Although it typically focuses on candy, one of the contributors post their Perfect Burger just yesterday.
Tanya and James, our burger-pimping duo, set out to make a 1:6 scale burger. To accomplish this task, they started with 703g (a little over 1.5 lbs) of "Asda's finest lean beef steak mince combined with an egg". They also added bacon, American cheese, "vegetation", relish and mayo to this concoction. We were nearly amazed when they had finished it all, but, disappointingly, it was over 3 sittings. If they're hoping to join the IFOCE circuit, they've got a lot of training to do.
Was this a worthy pimping? We would say no. Although they get points for doing this all at home, there have been a few great megaburgers built at various establishments around the country that would dwarf this attempt. Sorry burger-pimpers, but you've got to do better. We're talking a minimum of 5 lbs. if you'd like our attention. If you're going to pimp, aim for the Player's Ball and not the gutter.
After the Super Bowl, we claimed we'd make a Roethlis-Burger if the Steelers won. Well, they won and we decided to follow through on our end of the bargain. Since we're so late, we decided to video the whole thing. It's not the exact recipe as the original from Peppi's, but we came as close as we could without seeing one in person.
The video is right here and the recipe is after the jump. Enjoy.
Update (3/22/06 3pm): AHT reader Aoife wonders in the comments why we were pressing down on the burger when that's something you typically don't do. That reminded us that we originally planned to show you this story and video about Peppi's Roethlis-burger, where the chef/owner is also seen chopping up and pressing on the burger. We talked about it at some point in the video, but it ended up on the cutting room floor. As this is the first AHT video, we have some learning to do. Hopefully they'll get better as time goes on.
A Compacted History of the Bigger Burger War Call her the face that launched a thousand shits. In February, 100-pound college girl Kate Stelnick (right) finished the six-pound burger at Denny's Beer Barrel Pub in Clearfield, Pennsylvania, and a minor media storm whipped up around her. Catching wind of that, a New Jersey diner upped the ante with a 12.5-pound burger. In a dangerous game of brinkmanship, Denny's came back with a 15-pound burger.
Then a South Carolina grill got into the fracas, offering a 19-pound burger gigantic enough to leave its rivals shocked and awed—and its customers stopped up.
But now the ugly melee is going international, with a Canadian greasy spoon among the latest combatants to go nuclear in the Battle of the Bulging Burger. Ian's Kitchen & Soda Shoppe in Kingston, Ontario, threw its best minds into top gear and they emerged from the bowels of the skunk works with a burger that tips 20 pounds without toppings. (Three and a half pounds of Denny's 15-pounder are from toppings.) From AZCentral.com:
[Restaurant owner Ian] Sarfin's creation — which took more than three hours to cook Thursday morning — weighs almost 21 pounds.
"You're looking at an 18-inch diameter bun (and) there's a pound of cheese, there's a pound of onion, there's a pound of pickels, there's two pounds of tomatoes and five cups of sauce," said Sarfin. "Once you add it all together, you're looking at about 30-35 pounds total weight." ...
Sarfin said his hamburger — the equivalent of just over 100 quarter-pounders — is designed to feed 20 or 25 people.
To carry our mixed metaphors a bit further, it looks like this burger promises to be one helluva bunker buster, at least to those pooper-troopers stationed in the latrine.
A Hamburger Today likes to think we have friendly relations with our neighbors to the north, but we cannot stand for this steal-the-flag gambit on the part of wily Ontarians. Work should begin immediately on a bigger, better, 50-pound U.S.-based sandwich capable of deterring our enemies from such hostile acts of hamburgerism. We humbly propose a name for this next-generation whopper of a weapon: The Colon Pow!
SOUTH CAROLINA And you thought that 15-pound hamburger was big? More evidence in the dangerous escalation in the Big-Burger War comes out of South Carolina this week, where a 19-pound belly buster was created to outgun the 15-pound burger we highlighted earlier this month.
The bigger burger is available at Costner's Grill and Entertainment in Easley, South Carolina, and its genesis can be explained thusly:
The idea for this bigger hamburger came during a discussion of the 15-pound hamburger story a couple of weeks ago on "The Ralph Bristol Show." Bristol, taking the suggestion of his newsman Ed Jensen, decided to challenge any restaurant owners in his listening audience who would be willing to create an even bigger burger than the one by Denny's Beer Barrel Pub to step up to the plate.
And Costner's Grill and Entertainment did. The rest, they say, is history. At least for the time being.... Bristol came up with the name Costner's Carolina Colossus and customers can now order this unique menu item at the restaurant as long as they call ahead of time and let them know so they can be prepared.
File this entry under things that will either make you preemptively nauseous or salivate with delight. Denny's Beer Barrel Pub in Clearfield, Pennsylvania, is now serving a 15-pound burger, the Beer Barrel Belly Buster, which comes with 11.5 pounds of meat, 25 slices of cheese, a head of lettuce, three tomatoes, two onions, and more. It can be yours for only $30.
The round mound of ground made its debut on the Today Show this morning. I didn't get a chance to witness it, but based on this photo, people seemed amused.
Denny's Beer Barrel Pub had offered a six-pound burger, with five pounds of toppings.
In February, a 100-pound female college student became the first to eat the burger within the three-hour time limit. One month later, a New Jersey diner introduced a 12.5-pound burger.
Denny's Beer Barrel Pub responded with the Belly Buster, which costs $30 retail.
Over the weekend, four men took the challenge but couldn't get through the entire burger.
There was no word on what happened to the burger after its TV appearance.
The 
Five pounds of burger, broken down into 10 half-pound patties. And that's before you add the bacon and cheese (20 slices of each). And the five-pound sider of fries.
At A Hamburger Today, we can't help but focus on burgers of unusual size. Whether it's a 
Call her the face that launched a thousand shits. In February, 100-pound college girl 
But now the ugly melee is going international, with a Canadian greasy spoon among the latest combatants to 
And you thought that 15-pound hamburger was big? More evidence in the dangerous escalation in the Big-Burger War comes out of South Carolina this week, where a 19-pound belly buster was created to outgun the 
File this entry under things that will either make you preemptively nauseous or salivate with delight. 
