Lately, there has been a heated, protracted debate about the future of health care in our country. You’d think Americans would want cheaper, better health care that covers as many people as possible. Yet after consuming a Wise Guy Burger at the waterfront Red Robin, I’m half-convinced that if an item such as this can be marketed and sold in America, then a significant number of Americans don’t want better health care because they don’t want to be healthy.
Look, I love my carnival snacks; Lord knows I try to make a go of it while consuming as much pizza and fried chicken as my belt loops will allow. And for the most part I like Red Robin (remember, it was born right here in Seattle!), especially their guacamole bacon burger. But there are limits to such gluttony, and a “burger” which contains a huge hamburger patty, three mozzarella sticks, two layers of pepperoni, peppers, and marinara sauce is not just stretching those limits, it’s breaking them to the point of mocking the very notion of restraint.
Remember the Saturday Night Live skit “Taco Town,” where a fictitious restaurant (clearly modeled after Taco Bell) serves a taco wrapped in, like, six different shells, beans, cheese, “guacamolito” sauce, and a deep-dish pepperoni pizza? That’s a pretty close approximation of what eating a Wise Guy Burger feels like. But lest you think this offering is rife with such self-parody, there’s a surprisingly homegrown precedent for the Wise Guy Burger. The “grease trucks” of Rutgers University have long served sandwiches whose everything-but-the-kitchen-sink decadence more than rivals that of Red Robin. In New Jersey, these monstrous munchies go by names like “Fat Fucking Drunk” and “Fat Darrell.” That’s more like it, because anyone who’d make a habit of ordering the Wise Guy Burger is anything but wise. But ordering it for sport? Sure, what the fuck, you fat fucking drunk.
