The Great Cheeseburger Debate!

Last Thursday's post I badmouthed McDonald's cheeseburgers and Briane Pagel threw down the figurative gauntlet.  So here I am throwing the gauntlet back with this post about my favorite fast food cheeseburgers.

Though to be honest when I eat fast food I rarely ever get the bare-bones cheeseburger.  Usually a double cheeseburger at least.  Anyway, let the battle be joined!

If I want hamburger and I don't feel like getting out of my car, I usually go to Wendy's.  Because while the "Where's the Beef?" commercials were entertaining, they were also right.  You go to McDonald's or Burger King and you get these tiny pieces of "meat" that fit inside the bun.  Whereas at Wendy's you get the square hamburgers with corners hanging over the bun.  And the meat tastes like meat, not some kind of processed meat-like substance.

My all-time favorite though was the mushroom cheeseburger they had where it had like this cheese sauce, bacon, and mushrooms.  Those were so fucking good, but they don't seem to offer those anymore.  It seems like after Dave Thomas died they stopped having those.  Maybe no one else in the company liked them.  (Conspiracy theory!)

Though when I still lived "up north" in the Tri-Cities (Midland, Saginaw, Bay City in Michigan.  Consult a map.) my favorite place to go was Hot n Now.  When I was working in Midland I'd go there at least once a week and eat in a parking lot or something since it's drive-thru only there.  Good times.  Though their meat wasn't really any better than McDonald's, they did have one thing McDonald's doesn't:  green olives.  The double olive burger with cheese is what I get there 99% of the time because it is so awesome.  The olives just add that extra zing you don't get from the traditional lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and pickles.

Of course there aren't any Hot n Nows convenient to me now, though I still go to one in Chesterfield on occasion or sometimes when I'm passing through Bay City.

For the year I lived in Grand Blanc (outside of Flint) I often went to Halo Burger.  Their burgers are pretty much like Wendy's.  And it's kind of retro because they still give you foam containers, not giving a shit about the environment like every other fast food chain claims to.  The advantage over Wendy's though is again:  green olives.  Though you have to special order them so it costs extra.  I think you can also get mushrooms if you want.  Anyway, in some ways it's even better than Hot n Now because the meat is tastier and you get the olives.  That's win-win.

There pretty much aren't any of these except in the Flint area (and Birch Run) but I still sometimes stop if I'm in the Flint area at lunch or dinnertime.

Less regional than either Hot n Now or Halo Burger is Checkers/Rally's.  Fun fact:  did you know Seth Green used to do ads for them?  I hadn't realized that until they made a joke about it in "Robot Chicken."  Just like I hadn't realized he was the bratty kid in one of my mom's favorite '80s movies "Big Business."  And he also played Egg in the movie version of "The Hotel New Hampshire."  Anyway, the career of Seth Green aside, Checkers/Rally's is a second to Wendy's in the more widely available (here anyway) hamburger options.  For one thing they usually have low prices, like 2 sandwiches for $3 or $4 or $5, so it's a good bargain.  (Cha-ching!)  And as far as meat and toppings go they're better than McDonald's or Burger King.  Though I don't go there as much as I used to because their fries are spicier than normal ones.

Then there's Hardee's/Carl's Jr.  Their hamburgers are good (and if you want to use up a week's worth of fat/calories you can order a Monster Thickburger thing) since they revamped their menu a few years ago.  Probably about as good as Wendy's or Rally's but mostly I end up going there for breakfast.  (Their cinnamon raisin biscuits are awesome!)  Mostly because there's only two locations around here and neither is very convenient to me for lunch/dinner.

Funny Hardee's related story:  When I lived in Grand Blanc I used to go to the one in Flint because they had fried chicken that was about as good as KFC and cheaper.  Anyway, I was temping at this Waste Management office between Flint and Owosso, pretty much in the middle of nowhere.  (It wasn't a dump, just like a service center or something.)  One day I decided to go out to lunch so I thought I'd drive into Flint and go to Hardee's.  Along the way I got pulled over by a cop and that's how I got my first speeding ticket.  (Not my last.)  I did still go to Hardee's because really I was halfway there already, right?  So yeah that was a pretty expensive fast food meal.

A&W is another chain that isn't everywhere around me but is good on occasion.  I've always liked root beer (even better than regular beer!) plus they have "cheese curds" that are like fried mozzarella cheese nuggets.  Really though couldn't have thought of a better name than cheese curds?  Curds sound gross.  But they're tasty!  The hamburgers are fairly comparable to Wendy's or Burger King.  With root beer and fried cheese?  Yeah, baby!  Again I might go there more if they were more conveniently located to me.

Though recently I went to one in Auburn Hills at about 9ish after a busy day of writing at Panera Bread.  The hamburger was OK, but the fries were nasty.  They were stone cold!  I don't mean even a little cold; they were limper than my dick after seeing a Mrs. Geriatric USA pageant.  (Does that joke make any sense?)  So stay away from A&W once the sun goes down I guess because they'll serve you fries left over from lunch apparently.

Then after all that is Burger King.  That's usually my default fast food place if none of the above are nearby.  If it's between Burger King and McDonald's then I always go with Burger King because with the flame broiling does make it taste more like real meat.  And between the Whopper and Big Mac I prefer the Whopper.  More meat, less bun!  (Double entendre!)

Fun facts:  My first 18 months out of high school I worked at a local Burger King.  My first job was feeding meat into the flame broiler.  Then I worked my way up to cashier.  (Capitalism in action!)  Though I didn't really like cashiering because you have to deal with the public, which is annoying.  There aren't really many horror stories I can share.  Except that our location was kind of old so you'd get the occasional cockroach.  They since moved down the road and now that location is a Tim Horton's so if you go to the Tim Horton's in Midland, you might get more than you bargained for.  Also, if you leave a hamburger in the "steamer" storage thing too long the bun starts to liquify.  It's pretty gross.  Which if you look at your burger and the bun looks a little damp means they've been letting it sit around for a while.  Though the thing I hated the most was doing the dishes.  I usually worked the mid-day shift so a lot of the time I had to wash the stuff left over from breakfast.  Something about the egg left stuck to the pans always made me want to barf.  Plus when you have to wash trays you get assholes who leave the papers in them so if you're not paying attention those get in the water and make a mess.  Moral of the story:  dump your trash properly, assholes!  And seriously, stack the trays neatly.  Why can't people do this?  It takes like two seconds to put your plastic tray back properly and instead selfish d-bags always end up creating a Leaning Tower of Trays because they just toss it up there and leave, probably yapping on a cell phone with one hand and checking their Facebook updates with the other.  Even though I don't work fast food anymore (for now) I still put my tray back neatly and often give the stack a couple of bumps to realign it, which again only takes a few seconds to do.  Assholes.

Hey asshole, take that paper out and stack the tray neatly!

Finally, if there's nothing left, then I go to McDonald's.  I like them for breakfast (especially now with the mocha frappes) but have never really liked them for dinner.  Those tiny, over-processed cheeseburgers and Big Macs that are mostly bun and whatever the hell was in Chicken McNuggets...gross.  Though I do like the Angus burger with Swiss cheese and mushrooms.  Except usually they put this huge glob of mayo on for some reason.  Ick.  The snack wrap version was good too, though one time I made the mistake of ordering a chicken snack wrap and the "meat" was like fossilized.  It was nasty.  And while other people claim to love their fries, I don't.  They're kind of...boring.  Like the rest of McDonald's dinner menu.

That was a lot more nostalgic and in-depth than I thought.

Finally, the best cheeseburgers around here if we're talking anywhere, not just fast food are at Bagger Dave's.  Why?  Green olives!  It's kind of like Fuddrucker's where you can custom design your burger but they have better options.  You fill out this little card where you can select all different cheeses, sauces, and toppings from the standards to stuff like green olives, grilled mushrooms, grilled onions, etc.  It is just fucking awesome.  Also the last time I was in Novi they sat me at the bar and there was this hot redhead working there...

There, more than you ever wanted to know about me and hamburgers.