Weird Food of the Week: The Big Ass Burger

Dateline: Arizona. You could also call it "Prophetic Food of the Week." On vacay in northern Arizona, I couldn't resist scoping out the native vittles. Behold the Big Ass Burger, served up at Scottsdale's Roaring Fork restaurant, composed of an astounding 12 ounces of beef, crispy bacon, Colby cheese, iceberg lettuce, tomato, and grilled onions. Because Arizona doesn't require restaurants to post nutritional facts (as New York City does), I can't give you an exact calorie count--but I do know that the beef alone brings it close to 1,000.

I have nothing against burgers; love them in fact, especially charred on the outside, a little pink on the inside, topped with bleu cheese, and resting on a pillowy toasted bun. BUT...much of that delectable pleasure is lost, swamped, overwhelmed by the sheer heft of 12 ounces of oleaginous beef. I do believe humans were designed and programmed to eat some meat--chased down on the savannah and greedily devoured; lean, protein-packed, life-giving meat--but not to waddle from car to restaurant table and cast oneself into a sea of factory-farmed, chopped-and-fried, fatty flesh.

The result of such regular excursions, of course, is the "big ass" of that (surely somewhat self-aware?) title. Bottom line (pardon the pun): just because you can do something doesn't mean you must--something food purveyors in the U.S. don't seem to have grasped.

All that said, if you do decide to splurge, just this once, on the Big Ass Burger, don't forget your Big Ass Fries--a remarkable case of life imitating art...thousands of years in the (ironic) future.