For me: Mustard yes, milkshake no. French fries are as much a delivery method for toppings and condiments as anything. Sure, they can be delicious on their own, but that’s because they’re delivering oil and salt even when they’re not dipped in anything. I happen to prefer thinner, crispier french fries. I’m not here for the potatoes, folks.

Anyway, I love mustard and if a french fry is the most convenient available method for getting mustard in me, well then hell yes. I like milkshakes too, but I tend to distinguish my meals from my desserts. Blurring that line seems weird to me. So I don’t drink milkshakes with dinner either. Dinner then milkshake.

Great question, and I hate to cop out but I don’t know if I could pick just one. Off the top of my head, Hall of Famers from Di Palo Dairy and Cafe Ollin stand out, though I’m not sure I’ve been entirely consistent with my ratings. Also, there are plenty of times when it seems I want nothing more than a standard Shackburger from Shake Shack. Usually those times are when I’m walking past Shake Shack. It’s the smell of them that gets me. Do they have a Sbarro machine churning out the smell or something? Also, do people who work there get sick of the smell?

https://twitter.com/dustinparkes/status/233920279762587648

Not as much as I probably should. I’ve heard of the cheeseburger/chicken mash-up of which you speak. Is it not too big to bite? I’d certainly try it.

The only place where I’ve had any luck experimenting with off-menu food items is at Taco Bell, some details of which I covered here. I’ve since also had a Cheesy Gordita Volcano Taco Crunch, which was good but not appreciably better than the sum of its parts. What I’d really like is about two unsupervised hours in the Taco Bell test kitchen to see what I could come up with. I’d probably want to bring a couple friends and my dad along too, creative and dedicated Taco Bell eaters.

I certainly could. Despite how it may seem from the sandwich reviews here, I don’t typically eat pork more than once or twice a week and I almost never eat shellfish. I do like putting cheese on meats, but I could certainly do without it for a week if I had to. I don’t know why I would, though, since I’m not Jewish. No offense to anyone who keeps Kosher, of course, but then I’m not sure why anyone would be offended by my lack of Judaism. I just feel like whenever you bring up religion you need to say, “no offense” to cover your bases. So really, no one take offense to anything here. I just happen to love pork.

I’ve got enough willpower that I’m confident I could do just about anything for a week. Vegan? Sure. It wouldn’t be my favorite week, but I could do it. Hell, I imagine I could fast for a week if I absolutely had to for some reason.

Oh absolutely. I don’t know that the photographed burger has too many toppings, but when a place piles on too much stuff that isn’t bacon and cheese, it can get ridiculous and gimmicky. I don’t have any hard-and-fast rule about how many toppings a burger should have because it’s all about proportion, but there are few things more disappointing than a burger when I can’t actually taste the burger. As a general guideline, I would say it’s safe to add one extra, offbeat ingredient when the burger is fully loaded with typical ingredients and two extra offbeat ingredients when it isn’t.

But I very much enjoyed this bacon cheeseburger at J.G. Melon the other day:

Bacon, cheese, burger. Elegant in its bluntness, with pickles and onions on the side as optional toppings — I’ll have the former. When every ingredient is delicious, you don’t need to go crazy with toppings. You can, of course, but you don’t need to.

Well, I don’t know yet. I’m spending the day in Philadelphia, enjoying some sort of native sandwich for lunch and likely going out to dinner somewhere with the wife before we head back to New York. Something good, for sure. Usually I rely on Roadfood.com for travel eating recommendations.

I’m way more interested in what you have for dinner, Rob. What’s the best native food in the Netherlands? All I’ve heard about from friends who have been there is late-night drunken falafel in Amsterdam. Presumably that is neither native to the region nor the best thing available there. Anyone?

I actually think about that sometimes. I liked working in the deli because it made so much sense: We have food, you have money, we have the time and equipment with which to prepare this food in some delicious way you’ve requested, and for that you are willing to give us money that we will then use to buy more food. It’s the circle of sandwich life.

But opening and operating a business takes so much time and effort, represents such a huge financial risk, and seems so prone to randomness. And I have a job writing about baseball and sandwiches that provides health insurance. It’s not something I’m eager to walk away from.

I do think, though, that someone should give me some sort of massive stipend to serve as a sandwich consultant for a restaurant. “Sandwich Curator” if you want a fancy title. Basically I come up with new sandwich concepts or tell you how you can improve your sandwiches, then you pay me a ton of money and feed me lots of free sandwiches. WIN-WIN!

https://twitter.com/TheFoyeEffect/status/231073098030514176

Holy crap I’ve never even considered that. You mean the zesty Pepper Jack sauce, incidentally, but yeah… they need to get that stuff out there. Think of the things we could Baja!

So this is interesting: Apparently, under my radar, local BBQ man Dan Delaney started up something called BrisketLab, a NYC-based project to develop the best smoked brisket. After rousing success, he’s looking to expand to Brisket Town, population: (I hope) me. You can sign up now to be able to buy brisket when Brisket Town is founded, but you should do it through this link because if I send the most people I will win a free brisket. Do you not like me and also brisket?

Our man Brian Erni passed along this four-part article from Forbes outlining the differences between actual Japanese Kobe beef and the various meats sold as Kobe beef here in the U.S.

It’s an interesting read and it certainly debunks the claims to Kobe beef-dom made on menus everywhere, plenty of which come with ridiculous price tags. I’ve never gone in for $50 burgers anyhow, so it doesn’t much matter to me.

The most fascinating part of the article is when he suggests we can develop new breeds of cows that produce more delicious beef. I’m in for that. Sign me up. I’ve never in my life thought, “you know what? Beef could be better.” But the notion is pretty exciting.

Also worth noting: I’ve heard Pat LaFrieda beef is not made with real Pat LaFrieda.

We took the most offensive pieces from other famous burgers and just took it up a level. I mean, what’s the point of putting gold flakes on your food? It doesn’t add to the flavor, it’s just to be able to say you ate gold flakes. So screw it, we’re going to wrap the whole patty in gold and make people eat that.

– Franz Aliquo.

The food truck 666 Burger offers a $666 burger, a foie gras-stuffed kobe patty with champagne-steamed Gruyere cheese, lobster, truffles, caviar and a barbecue sauce made with Kopi Luwak coffee beans. It’s pretty funny, but it’d be funnier if Aliquo didn’t reveal himself in the same interview to be rather uptight about his definition of hamburgers. Still, their regular burger sounds like something I should try.

Via Bill.