In previous TV Gourmets, we’ve made meals from The Simpsons, Happy Endings, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Freaks and Geeks, Archer, Friends, How I Met Your Mother, and 30 Rock, but we’ve yet to feature a show that’s as much about food as Sunny is about horrible people doing horrible things.
Over the weekend, I, along with some friends (thank you, Joe, Oriana, Jessica, Kristina, and everyone else involved) and official UPROXX photographer Nadia Chaudhury, made eight burgers from Fox’s delightful Bob’s Burgers. For those who haven’t seen the show: shame on you. Also, a Burger of the Day appears on a chalkboard inside the titular restaurant. Rarely are the burgers — which always have pun names, like Mushroom with a View or Home for the Challah-Days — seen, so we decided to cook some of the “weirder” ones.
This should be read while “Kill the Turkey” (or any song from Bob’s, honestly) plays.
The burger: Not If I Can Kelp It Burger
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that kelp is crap. And kelp — you mark my words — will not only kill me, but also EVERYONE in the USA…and the world. On a burger, it’s crunchy and salty, but not in a good way, like putting an onion ring on a patty; kelp leaves a “this is sea urchin, not human food” taste in your mouth, which was thankfully washed away after I had a Child Molester (that will make sense shortly). For once, Urban Dictionary has it right when they described a Kelp Burger as, “The less than pleasurable poop taken the morning after a night of smoking marijuana as a result of consuming large amounts of bizarre foods.” Eating a mound of skunk weed would have been preferable.
On a scale of 1 (not tasty) to 5 (super tasty) Dancing Jimmys:
The burger: The Sound and the Curry
The burger below was both marinated in curry sauce and sprinkled with curry powder, and it was delicious. Curry is one of the world’s most perfect foods, so easy to make that even someone as clueless in the kitchen as the guy who buys generic, on-the-floor-of-the-supermarket cereal because he’s afraid he’s going to spill the good, name-brand Cinnamon Toast Crunch EVERYWHERE (that’s me!) could make a tasty chicken curry dish.
Once a curry fan always a curry fan, what I say.
On a scale of 1 to 5 Dancing Jimmys:
The burger: 50 Ways to Leave Your Guava
The notes I took while eating the guava burger read like a terrible slam poem: apple, sweet, juicy, cucumber, surprising, fresh, the walrus’ smile lets out the child’s sunshine cry into the hazy mist of the impoverished. OK, that last one’s not real, though it makes about as much sense as “surprising.” What does that even mean, Past Josh? (It means: 50 Ways to Leave Your Guava is good, not great nor bad, kind of like most of Paul Simon’s solo career.)
On a scale of 1 to 5 Dancing Jimmys:
The burger: Salvador Cauliflower
Steamed cauliflower tastes like nothing. Throwing the vegetable into a pot of boiling water reduces its occasional pungent odor, but on a burger, with no other fixings, you’d might as well be eating parsley. The only difference being, only monsters eat parsley; cauliflower aficionados are just boring people. I’d suggest baking it, instead.
On a scale of 1 to 5 Dancing Jimmys:
The burger: Fig-eta ‘Bout It
I have a confession about the Fig-eta ‘Bout It burger: we cheated. We went to two grocery stores, one of which was a co-op, and couldn’t find any figs. It’s important to note these grocery stores are in Brooklyn, where you’d assume figs sell like cans of spray cheese in Philadelphia. That’s what I thought, at least. But I was wrong, so we used Fig Newtons instead of BORING normal ol’ figs. The bread part of the cookies were sliced away (imagine the onion scene from Goodfellas…but with Fig Newtons), and the figgy goodness was placed on the burgers.
On a scale of 1 to 5 Dancing Jimmys:
The burger: The Child Molester
I assigned two friends, Ryan and Carly, to pick out the candy for the Child Molester. Otherwise, I would have pulled a ketchup/catsup and spent hours deciding on which candy bar to go with. (“How many M&M’s equals half a 3 Musketeers? Would a York Peppermint Pattie be overwhelming? Why am I settling on chocolate? What about Pixy Stix? When was the last time someone bought a Charleston Chew?”) Luckily, they done good and purchased Snickers and Twix, arguably the king of candy. I don’t this will shock anyone, but a hamburger with chocolate is sublime. An early death sentence, but still, sublime (not Sublime). The bars melted quickly, so the cookie crunch and caramel quickly spread over the length of the burger, and if that sounds sexual, it is. This is one tasty molester.
On a scale of 1 to 5 Dancing Jimmys:
The burger: The Don’t Get Crème Fraîche with Me Burger
“My name’s MC Crème Fraîche and I’m here to say/I love butterfat in a major way.” It’s a miracle we got out of the 1980s without BIG CREME FRAICHE bombarding us with that ad campaign. It wouldn’t have been that awful, though, because crème fraîche is so good, especially on a burger. It tastes like ricotta cheese but sweeter, and sweeter is better. Can’t recommend Don’t Get Crème Fraîche with Me (took me WAY too long to get that) enough.
On a scale of 1 to 5 Dancing Jimmys:
The burger: Papaya Was a Rolling Stone Burger
The only note I took down after eating this burger: “awful.” Underlined three times. Papaya sauce? Awesome. Slices of papaya on a dead cow? Not so much. It tasted like a rotten apple, or in the words of Jon Hamm talking toilet…
On a scale of 1 to 5 Dancing Jimmys: None.
