Semantics

How exactly do you define a 'burger'?

This is a question that probably popped into your mind at some point when reading my reviews, especially if you came across any dishes without ground beef in them. I will never fail to scornfully deride those shameless blasphemers daring to refer to such inherently inferior creations as "burgers". They seem to be under the outrageously mistaken impression that bun is what makes a burger, not the meat. I don't know why this ideological germ seems to be so pervasive but you can rest assured I shall never succumb to it.

Back to the point: what exactly makes something a burger? I have not been able to find the exact quote (admittedly because I'm too lazy to continue looking) but I religiously operate under the definition I've heard the famous American burger pundit George Motz use. To paraphrase:

A burger is ground beef served between slices of bread, somehow.

I wholeheartedly believe this to be a flawless foundation. It allows for endless expandability in terms of ingredients as long as the two most important ones - the bread and the ground beef - are present. I've come across all kinds of other ideologies that claim burgers must necessarily also include this or that ingredient. Usually there's talk of processed cheeses, sauces, onions, lettuce and tomatoes, even bacon. But I find all of that far too restrictive. Some of my favorite burgers include none of these things. And yet, they are, unmistakably, burgers. One would look silly arguing otherwise.

Before I conclude we must discuss another definitional question. It is one that naturally arises based on the premises outlined above:

Is a burger a type of sandwich?

I don't have famous sandwich reviewers handy for this one so let me offer up the best definition I found. It comes straight from Wikipedia:

A sandwich is "any dish wherein bread serves as a container or wrapper for another food type."

Perfect. That all we need. I stopped reading after that.*

Based on that rationale, the answer to the question above is yes - burgers actually fall under that definition.

Given all that we have discussed so far, some additional questions no doubt now plague your thoughts. If burgers necessarily contain ground beef, why am I also reviewing dishes without it? Worse yet, why am I ranking them together with actual burgers on a website ostensibly about burgers? And, come to think of it, why do I sneeringly refer to and ironically dismiss those dishes as "sandwiches" when logically, burgers are subsumed within this category by the very thesis I just postulated?

These are all valid concerns and legitimate questions. My response is this: who the fuck do you think you are?

You seem to be under a mistaken impression, dear reader, that your words hold some sort of sway here. But this is my fucking platform. There's no democracy to be found here. What I say goes.

You think you caught me in some sort of predicament? How do you figure? I'm not accountable to anyone. This isn't my source of income. You think I give a fuck about "reputational damage"? You think I'm afraid of being "cancelled"? Go ahead. Expose me. See what happens.

Yeah. That's what I thought. You've got nothing. Nothing!

* If you're one of those "fact-checkers" they keep warning me about you might have noticed that quote isn't actually on the page I linked. Yes, I am aware. Those words used to be on that page verbatim but have since been removed. This is no doubt the work of my detractors who do not want you to know the truth. I see you, motherfuckers! And rest assured, I will not yield to your Wiki vandalism. For as long as this site is operational, as God is my witness, I will not update that quote!