Saturday, July 17, 2010

Friendly's Grilled Cheese BurgerMelt

Just in case you're the last person on Earth to hear about the sandwich everybody's talkin' 'bout, the new Friendly's Grilled Cheese BurgerMelt is an ingenious invention: it's like a regular hamburger, but instead of having a bun it utilizes a grilled cheese sandwich instead of the bottom half of the bun and a grilled cheese sandwich for the top half of the bun. If you can picture that. If you can't, seeing how you're reading THIS online, try searching for the above named sandwich and you'll be rewarded with images galore. Make sure you have your search settings on "safe search OFF," and watch out if you're doing it in a public library; patrons have been known to be ejected for less.

It should be pointed out that Friendly's didn't invent this sandwich; records can be located of precisely similar sandwiches with names such as: "The Fatty Melt" and "The Chubby Melt" and "Fat Fuck Frank's LiteLunch." But Friendly's should be commended, in spite of them being reprehensible in every way imaginable, for bringing this culinary artwork to the masses. Crybabies all across cyberville will complain about calories and clogged arteries, but this sandwich is really pretty mild compared with what's out there.

It made me think of Akron, Ohio's Corral Restaurant, still open last I heard, which boasts a sandwich called "The NiteMare." To the best of my memory, it's a standard cheeseburger with pickles, tomato, and all that, but also plenty of onions, or was it onion RINGS... or both?! Wait, I'm not done. The NiteMare also contains some kind of lunch meat ham, or bologna! Wait, I'm not done. The real genius of this sandwich is that it ALSO contains a fried egg!

Of course, there will always be bigger and bigger, to the point of absurdity and impossibility. Sure, if you WANT to, you could put a side of beef between two large deluxe stuffed pizzas and call that a really big sandwich. But who are we fooling? A sandwich should be something that one person eats during one meal, can hold in both hands, and can get your mouth around. The nice thing about the Grilled Cheese BurgerMelt is that it pushes boundaries, but is still reasonable.

The real exciting thing about this sandwich is the way it alters reality and creates a wrinkle in the universe. It's as if you had, for instance, a book in which the cover was also a book, or perhaps pages placed between two books. It's still a book... but also something more. And when you think about it, what's stopping you from infinity? Imagine a hamburger, with, instead of a bun, has grilled cheese sandwhichs as buns, but each of those grilled cheese sandwiches have, instead of bread, cheese burgers on either side of the melted cheese, and each of those cheeseburgers have, instead of buns, bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches... and on and on into total insanity.

The one criticism of this product is its name, which even NOW I can't remember. It's a hard name to care about, or indeed, remember. Let's start a letter writing campaign to Friendly's with suggestions of what else they might call this new sandwich. Go nuts and think of your own, mail it in to the home office, and if they don't change it, boycott them! Anyway, here are some ideas: The Crazy Burger; The Lead Blanket; Fried Heaven; Hercules Burger; Threefer One; The LeBron; The Sophisticated Executive; The Aristocrat.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

For some reason I was trying to explain to my girlfriend who Paula Deen was, and in doing so found a video in which she not only puts bacon and egg on the burger, but uses doughnuts for buns. I've been eating nothing but fruit ever since.

Randy Russell said...

Thanks for the Paula Deen tip! I'm always looking for new heroes, and she shares my birthday!

http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2008/03/paula-deen-is-trying-to-kill-us-part-4-bacon-donut-egg-cheeseburger.html

I personally will eat combinations of things that no one I know will go near, but that bacon and egg burger on doughnuts for buns... just the thought makes me almost hurl. Still, I admire the controlled insanity of the idea of it. It goes just far enough to make you believe someone actually might eat that. It's not as absurd as it is just old-fashioned SICK.