Pineapple, the disturbing new trend.

Dear Pineapple,
I don't need your help, you're just making things worse.

Sincerely,
Food of the world


Ok, ok everyone calm down, this is a blog of my opinions, OPINIONS. (I have to start this post like this because I have noticed some people get very passionate about condiments and fruit. But oddly no one is passionate about passion fruit. . .) How many pizza's, jellos, and frog eye salads (it's a Utah thing, look it up) have been ruined by this otherwise heavenly fruit? 
Let's be crystal clear. I love pineapple, it is possibly the most delicious of all fruit. I believe that, alone, pineapple is a blessed fruit invented by our Creator with the sole purpose to bring us joy. . . Alone. . . Only alone and not as an ingredient in other foods. Lobster is also delicious but you don't see me adding it to my apple pie. That would do nothing but ruin a food that needed no such help in the first place.
Alone pineapple is bliss to the palate but when it is diced and thrown into recipes that are not in need of reinvention it is diabolical. I know many of you claim to enjoy pineapple pizza. To you people I say: No you don't and you are wrong.
I think people are confusing themselves. The pizza is delicious and the pineapple is delicious, but these people just somehow judge them separately rather than how they taste together. The texture and the taste do not jive. The last thing warm, savory, gooey, crunchy pizza needs is an over-sweet, wet, leaking, fibrous lump of magma-hot fruit that has been in a tin can since the cold war. I don't understand how it keeps making the cut and showing up on menu's roster every year. That is disturbing enough but now there is an even more offensive trend developing in the culinary world: Pineapple on burgers.
WHY!!!!!!

To this I say, beam me up Scotty because I don't want to live on this planet any more.
At this point you could read my pickle post and essentially replace the word 'pickle' with pineapple and you would get an essence of how I feel about it.
I don't care how Hawaiian the name of the burger is or how much teriyaki you douse it with, the pineapple doesn't belong.
A few years back I was having one of those weeks, you know the kind. I was just tired of dealing with people and needed some time for myself. My wife left town for some reason leaving me alone and I decided to cheat on our diet a bit and go to Carl's Jr. I found a coupon for buy 1 get 1 free teriyaki burger so I got two identical burgers . . . to eat alone. Now that I remember this story I am realizing I must have been in a deep depression because rather than go home and eat my food I drove to a cemetery and ate it on a bench among the dead. Not sure why, I probably didn't want to eat it at my empty house but didn't want to be surrounded by living people at the nearby park either so logically the cemetery made sense at the time. Anyway, I ate the first burger without even thinking, or tasting for that matter. Then when I started on the second I got about three bites in when I realized that I did not like this combination at all. The flavor and textures just contradicted each other. Way to end an already crappy week right? I couldn't even enjoy one thing that week, not even surrounded by dead people, man when it rains it pours.
The hatred I harbor for the pineapple in my food is different than that I have toward the pickle. My reaction to pickles on my burger is annoyance and anger. My reaction to pineapples on my burger is to bow my head, turn and slowly walk away as a near constant stream of tears fall from my cheeks. The idea that people think that this is a good idea breaks my heart. When will the hurting stop?
That is all I have to say on the matter, I can't talk about it anymore. I need a break and possibly a good long cry. Maybe there's a cemetery nearby or at least a morgue where I can be at peace with myself.

Just be aware that, while I love getting restaurant suggestions from you, my loyal readers, if I walk into a burger joint and there is, anywhere on the menu, a burger with any amount of pineapple on it I will walk out. I'll then get in my car and sob until I reach Scaddy's to be comforted in the warm embrace of the Wayne Burger. Wayne understands me like no one else does.

Make it a Habit . . . Burger.

A couple of weeks ago facebook exploded with posts like "Finally, a Habit Burger in Salt Lake!" or "Habit Burger! Om nom nom." or "I love Habit Burger so much I wanna move to Colorado City and make it my second wife!" Stuff like that. I happened to be the one guy on facebook who hadn't ever heard of the place so I followed the crowd as I always do and decided to try them next.
To start, future patrons should be aware that there is a lot of construction going on in front of the restaurant where they are digging up the street nearby. After ordering and while we waited for our number to be called my wife decided she wanted to sit at a table on the outside patio because the weather was perfect. But as we sat I kept catching a whiff of something gross. I asked her if she smelled it and she sniffed at the air a few times and said she thought maybe she did but wasn't sure so at my request she was gracious enough to let us move inside. I thought it smelled like the Great Salt Lake, because if you're familiar with the infamous lake you know that it has a certain. . . aroma, it wasn't strong but it was there. However, no one else seemed to mind it. I have been told that I have a sensitive nose, so maybe it I was the only one that noticed. Later, when we left we decided it was most likely the sewer pipes that they were digging up in the street rather than the lake because the lake is not nearby and I've never caught a whiff of it while in the city in the past. Now, that sounds worse than it actually was and this shouldn't be a deterrent to any of you. I don't blame them for the construction but I would tell people to go get a delicious burger at Habit and eat it inside. Until the construction is finished that is, unless you don't seem to notice the smell which you probably won't.

Also, how bad is it that we confuse sewage smell for what our famous lake smells like? My wife and I went to an amazing concert at Saltair which is on the shore of the Great Salt Lake last summer and it reeked so bad that it was all anyone was talking about, but after 10 minutes it didn't bother us or anyone else anymore. I don't know what that says about us, but . . . I wonder why business is faltering at the concert venue located next to that lake who's smell is often mistaken for literal ass. We may never know. . .
Ok back on subject, so Habit Burger focuses on charred meat and quality ingredients including caramelized onions which were delicious. I ordered the double charburger with cheese combo which came with fries and a drink, all for the great price of about $8. I like the price a lot. My wife betrayed us all and ordered from the sandwich menu, she ordered the tri-tip sandwich with avocado. But I couldn't stay mad at her after I tasted it, it was delicious. In fact, I enjoyed it more than I did my burger.

Don't get me wrong, the burger was good, very good; but the tri-tip sandwich was better. I forgot to order my burger without pickles and had to pick them off by hand. They were big thick slices from huge monster pickles, exactly the kind that should stay away from my burger.
Also, they advertise their toasted buns on the menu and I'm beginning to find a linkage between the quality of burger places and the effort they put into promoting the fact that their buns are toasted. My theory is that the more promotion on their buns' "toastiness" the more likely their food is underwhelming. If you have to advertise the fact that you toast your buns you may be compensating for something. Imagine if Denny's advertised that they served their bread toasted. Yeah, not really an attraction. But this is just a hypothesis at this point and I have yet to test it on every restaurant. (Continue to read my future posts as I try to prove my theory.)
There was something that I absolutely loved about Habit Burger. The fries. They were delicious! They reminded me of McDonald's fries but even better. Now, I know comparing any restaurant to a fast food restaurant is not usually a good thing but in this case it is a big compliment. I don't care how much of a purist you are, you love McDonald's fries. You just do. If you ask any honest person what the best thing about McDonald's is they will say "their breakfast sandwiches" and then if you ask what the second best thing is they will say "the fries!" That probably means that Habit's fries are delivered frozen and are not freshly cut at the restaurant, which is a bit disappointing. But, that aside, the fries were simply amazing, delicious, better than McDonalds and the crispiest I've ever tasted. I LOVED THE FRIES! (also, did you hear McDonalds is serving breakfast starting at midnight now? It's about time! Now if only they served it all day long I might actually eat there every once in a while.)
To put it delicately Habit Burger was very good but it didn't own up to the hubbub that I have heard about it, at least as far as tastiness goes, except of course for the fries. Did I mention the fries were amazing? And its toasted-bun-promoting is a bit on the heavy side, so take that for what its worth. But, (and there is a big big BUT) as far as this blog is concerned, they are the best burger for your buck. A very good burger, not a great burger like you'll get at Scaddy's and Five Guys, but Habit Burger won't set you back $7 a burger unless you order fries and a drink. So for that, I approve and so should you.