The Mortician

Where I live there's a local burger joint called Morty's, and they make what just might be the best hamburgers I've ever eaten.

And yes, that means I'm comparing them to fresh-ground beef cooked at home as well. The flavors they construct into their burgers are as creative as they are outstanding, and wherever they source their beef from is just as carefully considered for quality as whatever it is they do in the kitchen to ensure it's always cooked to perfection. I have eaten a lot of good burgers in my life, so it's hard to be 100% confident in saying which one is the best, but simply put I have never been anything other than thrilled with anything I've ordered at Morty's. And I haven't even started to gush over their fries.

So when I say that I've eaten probably the best burger offered up at this place, you'll understand the implications of the claim. It's among the best burgers... that I've ever eaten. I've eaten a lot of burgers. Hundreds. Thousands of the things. I'm not sure how the math works out on this, because I'm no food scientist, but possibly even tens-of-thousands (that is what food scientists do, right?).

So to put it bluntly, the Mortician is the best burger I have ever purchased from a place that sells burgers, and it plays quite comfortably in the realms of over-the-top splurge-tastic home-made burgers I've had. The flavor profile is carefully considered to maximize the impact of the ingredients, and even something as simple as the ratios between meat, other meat, fried veg, and capsaicin is almost scientific in its construction (or is this what food scientists do? I'll admit this is a bit of blind spot in my understanding of scientific fields).

And you can trust my opinion on this too because I'm a very well documented hater of, in particular, McDonaι.'s burgers. So clearly I have at least above-average taste in burger-flesh. The Mortician consists of two third-pound patties of honestly I'm not even sure what kind of beef, but it tastes like it was locally sourced, butchered, and cooked all between the time you order and the time you eat. Which seems logistically unlikely, but I'm not going to try and define whatever magic goes on back in that kitchen. Those patties are paired with bacon, cheese, sauce, and a thick-boi delectably battered onion ring wrapped around some jalapenos. The resulting flavor profile is an entrancing blend of savory, spicy, and umami with just a hint of sweetness that I can only describe as delicious. To term it anything else would be madness, a disservice to the sandwich and a disservice to words as a whole.

The dictionary definition of "delicious" just has a picture of the Mortician next to it.

It's a huge, heavy burger to be sure. That makes it expensive, and also, not surprisingly, seasonal. It shows up around October every year, hangs out for a month until the name "mortician" stops being festive and starts being a morbid predictor of the fate of anyone who eats too many of these things, and then vanishes. But that all works to its benefit, no doubt. Because that way you can order one of these, revel in the hilarious over-indulgence it represents, and then you've got a year to work off the approximately seven-million calories you just consumed before you can have another (food scientists can confirm the caloric count in the comments below. Probably).

So while it may not be the absolute best burger I've ever eaten, though honestly it's in the running, the Mortician is without a doubt the best burger I've ever purchased that was already in the form of a burger when it was handed to me. I don't think much more than that needs to be said.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to hit the treadmill for another (checks notes) 291 days to burn off all these calories.