Reviving burger wars...

Crystal... WTH? A dinner roll wiped on pink slime, with cheeze... Can't be real. Yuk I've heard it's like White Castle... So won't go there either.

No, sir! Maybe I just got "the bad Krystal", but I was amazed at how horrible it was. I love White Castle!

You look at the menus... they look identical. Looks like the exact same burgers and fries as White Castle.

Maybe they are, and maybe we just went to the worst Krystal in Florida... but it was awful. I threw most of my meal away. I preferred to leave hungry than continue to eat the "food" produced there.

For real, if you're ever in Minnesota, stop by a White Castle; all the ones I've been to here have been wonderful.
 
We've been to 5 Guys exactly once. And the nearest is right down the street from Burger King. We were not impressed, I guess. The ideal combo to me is a Burger King Whopper and Micky D's fries.

In the past A&W's Teen Burger was great. Of course, in high school and college the local A&W was owned by a guy by the name of McDonald. So, we'd go to McDonald's A&W. :p

Locally (when we were in college) over in Moscow, ID there was a bar called the Alley. The Alley Burger was the best. They also had a pin ball machine that would light a light if you got a high enough score. Light the light and you got a token for a free beer. Beer was $.35 a glass back then and it was 5 cents to play the machine. I could like that light far more often than once every 7 games. Drank a lot of cheep beer in that place back when we were in college. Long gone, but we graduated in 1975, so what do you expect?
 
Well, that's a good start. But then ya gotta cook it over charcoal, add the BBQ sauce, bacon, cheddar, top it with a fried onion ring and a dollop of slaw, and slap some mayo on the bun. Call 911 as you take the first bite, and they should arrive by the time the heart attack hits. Just in case they're late, be sure someone nearby knows CPR.

But it's worth it.

Breakfast burger at a semi-local brewery:

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1/2 pound burger, cheddar cheese, fried egg, bacon, onion ring. With a side of rings, of course.

Cardiologist IS on speed dial...
 
Realizing that may have been rhetorical....
It wasn't rhetorical. I saw them on a Culver's menu with no description other than "Our famous butterburgers." I didn't get the memo.

Nauga,
who settled for an autograph
 
I was going to take my brother to this place as a joke.

Then two weeks before the trip, he went into afib....


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I never got into 5 guys burgers. Too greasy and ill-constructed. The fries are nice.

Some of my favorite burgers:

Alonzo's on Cold Spring Lane in Baltimore. They have two burgers of note: the one-pound "The Meal" and the raw beef sandwich (essentially a steak tartar burger).

Clark's on El Camino in Mountain View. Decent burger in a couple of configurations and just about any "fixin" you could want to put on it.

Dark Horse/St. James Infirmary/etc... This is a small chain based in Boulder Colorado. They had a location in Mountain View until it burned down (and a few others). Loved the peanut butter on the burger option there.
 
No one mentioned White Castle?

Best after a night of drinking.... ;)
 
This is a Krystal burger. Notice, that even in the EXAGGERATED photo... The "meat" is just a tiny bit thicker than the pickle slice.

The entire "burger" is the size of one of Sarah Lee's heat and serve dinner rolls. If White Castle's is made of prime beef, it can't be much better...

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Now, go getchya some Maidrites for a different experience in burger tomfoolery!
 
This is a Krystal burger. Notice, that even in the EXAGGERATED photo... The "meat" is just a tiny bit thicker than the pickle slice.

The entire "burger" is the size of one of Sarah Lee's heat and serve dinner rolls. If White Castle's is made of prime beef, it can't be much better...

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Krystals are horrid. The Krystal chik actually doesn't taste too bad and is acceptable if there are no alternatives. Need about 6 of them to make a decent meal.

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Krystal is definitely a "sometimes" food. I was raised about a mile from one. It was treat growing up. And I loved it because I was (and was allowed to) eat 3+ hamburgers at a meal. I used to get the craving about once a year for some. But I haven't in a while. They steam the buns on top of the chopped onion on the grill. It's the buns, onions and mustard (which I normally don't eat on burgers) that make it. And it's a unique meal. I don't really class them as hamburgers, as in "I'm hungry for a hamburger". They are Krystals and that's different.
 
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Carl's Jr.
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Carl's Jr has their Western Bacon Cheeseburger. Coupled with a side of onion rings and you've got a great meal.
 
Hardees was always a disaster and Imasco pretty much destroyed them (and a few other chains like Roy Rogers). Carl's is a great improvement over what they were.
 
Are Burger King's onion rings still those horrific minced onion loops fried in lard that coated your mouth with slime, worsened by a cold drink?

I love onion rings. I HATE those things...
 
Are Burger King's onion rings still those horrific minced onion loops fried in lard that coated your mouth with slime, worsened by a cold drink?

I love onion rings. I HATE those things...

Not that I can recall, but I haven't had them in a while. BK's rings were okay but not great, same as Carl's/Hardee's. habit Burger has the best fast food onion rings hands down.
 
Have to go with fudruckers, can do Burger King in a pinch
 
Why bother with the big chains? Every city has some really good local places to get burgers.
 
Why bother with the big chains? Every city has some really good local places to get burgers.

In Waco when I was there way back in the late 70s, there were two independents:

Dog-N-Burger

Ptomaine Tommie's

In both places the burgers were big enough to fill a teenage boy, as was the french fries that came with it. Add a large soft drink and total cost was little over 3 bucks.
 
Why bother with the big chains? Every city has some really good local places to get burgers.

When the wife and I were in Savannah a few years ago we had some excellent "sliders" ...
 
Tried In-n-out a couple times...tasted like I was chewing on a salt lick...New BK near us opened up...Been there twice, got my burger messed up with stuff I don’t want on it both times. Nearest McD’s hitting about 40% on not screwing the order up. Nearest Whataburger has become a total time failure since March... can’t get thru there in under 20 minutes, even at 3 am with no one ahead of me in the drivethru. Too far for any other place, unless I’m already close to them.

Going to revert to all home cooked this fall.
 
I’ve been eating INO 5 days a week for 24 years. It still hasn’t gotten old. Everything you get there is fresh, right down to the meat. INO is the only one of the quick service restaurants that butchers and patties their own meat. Add an every other day deliver and it’s as fresh as it gets. For the quick service places it cannot be beat.


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Why bother with the big chains? Every city has some really good local places to get burgers.

Bill, the problem in smaller town America is the fast food joints come in and force the mom n pops out of business. I toured several small towns in the Appalachian mountains this summer and each one has two or three major FF places, mom n pop places boarded up. Kinda sad.
 
Yeah, when we stop somewhere on an aerial photography run we generally try to support a non-chain restaurant if we can.
 
The key to 5-guys is getting the little burgers IMO. The regular (double) is too greasy for me as well.

Its my favorite chain burger, as it’s the most similar to what I would cook in the backyard. Loads of fresh toppings on a more plain bun.

Fancy burgers often served in restaurants with lots of cheese, sauce, anything fried on them and buttered buns are not my thing at all.

In and out strikes me as an honest classic burger thats tasty for its price. My wife and I get them while Road tripping in California sometimes. The line that is often at the drive-through is the one major drawback. Obviously we don’t have them here in South Carolina but if we did they would be one of my first fast food choices. I very very seldom eat fast food anyways though.

I have not an eaten a burger from McDonald’s, BK or Hardees in years. Krystal has been about 10 years, and that’s not nearly long enough to forget how bad that was.
 
The key to 5-guys is getting the little burgers IMO. The regular (double) is too greasy for me as well.

Exactly! I order the little cheeseburger all the way. With two meats the meat taste masks the tastes from the fried mushroom/onions and all the other fixin's. In this case two meats is one too many.
 
Bill, the problem in smaller town America is the fast food joints come in and force the mom n pops out of business.
The chains don't force the mom n pops out of business, the customers do. If the customers don't prefer the mom n pops over the chains then why would we want to keep them?
 
I remember as a kid in the 60s and 70s every small town in Texas had a Dairy Queen. It would be the busiest place in town on Friday nights. Juke box, pinball machines and a condom dispenser in the bathroom.....
 
I’m having the Whataburger Pico de Gallo burger now and it has reconfirmed my belief that this was the wisest choice!
 
Ah, Krystal burgers. Therein hangs a tale....

When I was a kid in Jacksonville, FL, there was a local hamburger chain called "Milligan's." It was the Jax version of White Castle or Krystal, serving very similar burgers, with multiple locations around town. https://www.thejaxsonmag.com/article/the-story-of-milligans-beefy-burgers/ . Milligan's closed up shop back in the '70s.

Now, we all know how sometimes pregnant ladies have cravings for certain foods. When my wife was pregnant she craved Krispy Kreme glazed donuts. When my own mother was pregnant, both with me and my sister, she craved Milligan's hamburgers. She was not a big fan before or after, just during pregnancy. To this day, though, my sister and I both like Krystal burgers, the modern equivalent of the old Milligan's.

My wife doesn't like Krystal, of course, so these days the only time I can get a sack of their burgers is on Father's Day. It's sort of an annual tradition.


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