So in Mad Men one of their new clients is Burger Chef. I’m watching some old Burger Chef TV spots on YouTube, and I come across a really odd way these two are eating hamburgers. First, the dad picks up a hamburger that’s sitting normally right side up, but flips it upside down on the way to his mouth. Then the kid (around 1:45) takes a normal bite, but flips his burger upside down to set it down.
WTF? Did these people never eat a burger before? Don’t you find that weirdly peculiar? In a fast food ad today with the attention to detail, I can’t imagine a commercial director using that.
Sure there is! Buns are only symmetrical on people, and even then not always. Hamburger buns have an obvious top and bottom by virtue of how they rise. That’s before we even get to the toppings. Who the hell wants to flip a burger so the cold ingredients like the lettuce and tomato are on the bottom of your mouth!?
Sometimes if a burger is especially messy or the thin, bottom half of the bun is becoming soggy, I will flip it upside down so the contents can be supported by the thicker, stronger top half of the bun.
This. The bun is usually not symmetric and the top half is generally larger and sturdier. So it makes sense to flip the burger over and have the sturdier half of the burger supporting it and soaking up the juice.
the bottom half (not really) of the bun is thinner and often moist and weakened. the top (not really) of the bun is thicker and domed (a stronger structural element). inverse is best.
on the other hand, depending on composition) the top can have LTP (lettuce, tomato, pickle) which act as a friction release slip sheet. this requires eating using stronger clamping force to prevent CE (contents ejection).
I’ve known a bunch of people to do this, so it isn’t weirdly peculiar to me. It’s not usual these days, but it doesn’t seem to be that rare. I found a thread here on Chowhound, and it’s apparently common enough to warrant a thread with a reasonable about of people chiming in to say they do, in fact, flip.
And cold ingredients on the bottom isn’t that weird to me, either. I’ve had burgers with cold toppings on the bottom, too.
This is an abomination! Hamburgers must be eaten right side up! Eating them upside down is like doing something analagously distasteful, it cannot be tolerated!
Or maybe it’s none of my business how other people eat hamburgers. I’m not sure, which sounds better?
I came here to post the same thing. If a burger has a lot of sauce on it or a lot of moist toppings loaded underneath the patty, or if it’s just plain been sitting for 15-20 minutes while you drive home, then the heel of the bun tends to get compressed and soggy and threatens to fall apart on you.
It’s also sometimes easier for me to eat a lot of foods upside-down, since I have no top teeth and I don’t always wear my dentures when eating softer foods (since you lose a lot of the taste when the denture is covering your palate). By inverting the sandwich I can more readily apply the cutting pressure from my bottom teeth to the parts of the sandwich that would be harder to bite through otherwise.
I do this about halfway through eating a burger. I have a mild underbite like many people do, but somehow the way I eat thicker sandwiches like burgers, the bottom bread always seems to disappear faster than the top. So I turn it upside down to even it out. This happens for me with any thicker sandwich, not just burgers. Almost anything besides grilled cheese or PB&J. Or if it’s sloppy and on a burger bun, sure I’ll flip it so the thicker bread can hold the weight and soak up more.
I wouldn’t look or think twice at someone eating or setting a burger downside up.
It seems kind of natural to me. I pick the sandwich up with my fingers underneath (to support it) and thumbs on top. My hands then rotate to thumbs-on-bottom fingers-on top, flipping the burger as I lift it to take a bite. It’s the same motion as doing curls.
The passion and fire exhibited by the OP over this burning issue makes for more interesting reading, but the rational approach makes for a calmer world in which we all benefit.
I vaguely recall an ad campaign for one of the national burger joints that was something about “So juicy that you have to eat it upside down”…but my recollection is from the late '60s early '70s and I think Madmen is set much earlier than that (I don’t watch the show).
Also, Burger Chef used to have the single greatest burger-product ever: it was a ‘steak’ sandwich. It was a slightly thicker than normal fast food burger but oblong shaped so it would fit on an oval bun. It had bbq sauce, onion rings and shredded lettuce and I can remember it’s taste to this day.
Whether you eat a burger convex side up or down is totally irrelevant. What is crucial is maintaining even positioning of the fingers such that the condiment plies don’t experience interlaminar shear and debond. While the convex shape of the upper bun does help with finger placement, it is neither critical nor intrinsic to the pre-mastication transport of the burger.
However, a burger should properly be constructed with liquid condiments below the patty (thus mixing with the juices from the meat releasing glutamates to create a balanced taste which contributes to the fullness of the flavor, i.e. umami) while cold ingredients should be located above the patty to moisten the top of the mouth and give the appropriate textile response, preparing the gustatory cortex sufficient time to ready itself for the symphony of flavors. Some well-intentioned people attempt to put a slice of lettuce between the lower bun and everything above in an effort to keep the bun from soaking up juice but this only results in the impenetrable substrate sluicing the meat juice along the channels formed between stem structures and the resulting geyser of grease that escapes and dribbles down onto the hands.
In grotesque American fashion many restaurants now prepare the burger with a double dose of sauces above and below the patty, with the result generally overpowering the taste of the meat, a tradition started by fast food establishments in order to mask their substandard offerings. This failure to adhere to the long-standing separation between sauce and vegetable is a deplorable state of affairs in the culinary culture of the US and should be brought to a stop by all legal means available starting with an emergency federal injunction via Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the Constitution, United States v. Lopez be damned.
There is also the question of what kind of beverage may be consumed while eating a hamburger, but this is a topic for another day.
Why is that worse than having them at the top of your mouth?