So there's this burger. A burger that lives inside a sushi restaurant. Its creator claims its fame to every customer who will listen. The claim is that it's the best in town.
A co-worker told me about it a while back. I'd been to NAAN before, and it's fine. Nothing to write home about. But the tale of this burger intrigued me. How could this guy think he has the best burger in town? In Dallas, no less, a town of many, many acclaimed burgers? "He owned a steakhouse," my co-worker replied.
Well, I owned a Barbie Dream House once. That doesn't mean I can make tiny plastic high heels.
Any burger whose reputation precedes it this hard deserves some attention. In cases like this, there's always a slim chance of epicness, and I'm an optimist. So I decided to try this burger. And because scientific research requires it, I brought along some more-than-qualified friends as test subjects. So let's just see what a few of my fellow Aters thought of NAAN's best burger contender.
Three of us ordered the "cheeseburger." Our fourth ordered a couple of sushi-restaurant-appropriate items, as to not draw suspicion.
When the burgers arrived, there was much gasping. Mostly from me. For a few minutes we all just looked at the things, turning our plates round and round in an attempt to guess what we'd actually been given. Here's how it breaks down:
Say you don't like tomatoes. Too fucking bad. The cheeseburger comes the way it comes, $4 for about $10 worth of burger parts. And if you don't care for any one piece of the monstrosity, well, you can remove that piece yourself. Trust me, we asked.
In truth, the NAANburger had potential to be not nearly the "best" but something worth sending friends and strangers to try. But all those burger hopes and dreams were dashed by what is unarguably the most important part of any burger: the beef. It was a sad, stocky patty, cooked to the brink and just not good. But even with the burger's faults, at the same time it could be everything a non-sushi eater could want out of a sushi place. Maybe it's actually perfect in its three-meat-loaded imperfection. Maybe. But not likely.
In the end we ordered a "cheeseburger," but what came out was much, much more. It was Dallas. It was everything you could ever think of to want in a burger, the kitchen sink -- and bulgogi. It was a monument of three meats and crazy things built as a tribute to mediocrity in abundance. And it won't change for anyone. It could never, and would never, apologize for what it is. This burger had all kinds of spunk.
Rock on, you crazy burger. A tip of my bitchy hat to you, sir.
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