“Um, excuse me? This is the knife you gave me to cut this godly burger… Jesus…”

Ok so many of you have been asking, “So Dom, what’s up with the knife test category?”… Well, here I am to spill the fries.

It all started 5 years ago, at a restaurant-who-shall-not-be-named. I was sitting there in the booth, cozy, yet anxious at the same time. My stomach growling up at me, I looked down in mere sympathy and said, “It’s almost here buddy, it’s almost here…” I was waiting for not just any burger, but a burger that had been my favorite for years prior. I looked over my friends sitting across from me, and saw the waitress zip around the corner and head our way. She arrived at our table, and then kept walking by. Fuck me. The anticipation and the let down was a little much to handle.

Finally, the burgers arrive. Not going to lie, it could’ve came a little sooner, but whatever, no big deal. “You are here now, and I’m going to eat you”, is what I thought as I looked down at a beast of a burger.

As I went to cut the burger in-half, as any self-respecting burger connoisseur would do, I noticed that something was wrong. At first, my mind raced to figure out what was going on, then I noticed that the weight of the knife seemed a little too light. As my eyes met the knife, face-to-blade, sheer terror struck my core as I realized they had given me a butter knife to cut my burger. “No, no. No. This must be a mistake”, is what I thought. My appetite gone for the moment, my friends looked at me and could tell something was wrong. I didn’t want to talk about it at the time. I thought nobody would understand.

There they were, my friends. Enjoying their delicious burgers, and not even cut in half. Bite after bite, a smile grazed their faces as I was left alone, sad, with my uneaten burger. The waitress came by to check up on us. “Is everything all right?”, she said. “No, everything is totally wrong…”, is what I would’ve liked to say, but I answered properly, “Yes; however, you think you could bring me a steak knife?”. She said she would be pleased, and took off. There she was, 1 minute later. “I’m sorry sir, these are the only knifes we have”… I’m sorry, what? I didn’t know how to respond. I therefore nodded, and she left.

My worst nightmare had come true: A restaurant had served me a burger that measured 4 1/2 inches tall, and had left me hanging without a proper knife with which to cut it. I was disgusted. After all that waiting, after all those countless images in my head of how it looked, after the sensation in my belly upon it’s arrival, I sat there. Hopeless.

Courage, I thought. I just need to be courageous, and do my best, to cut this burger. “This is the time to step it up Dom. This is the time to show ’em what you’ve got”, I said to myself. I picked back up, the piss-shit of a knife, and began to operate. Sweating under the overhead lighting, that was much too low (might I add), I sawed back-and-forth, slowly but surely, and did my best to cut the burger as it had deserved to be cut.

“God-damn this is taking forever… I feel as though I’ve been surgeoning for 10 minutes now…”, I thought. My friends later would tell me it took 30 seconds.

Well after it was done, I took a look at the burger. It’s a memory I would like to forget. It’s a picture, that I would be ashamed to share with you. Jagged and rough on all edges, it was a horrific sight. Meat crumbling off the edge, tomatoes looking life-less, and the lettuce not even inside the burger anymore, it didn’t make for a simple pick-up-and-eat.

But I took the first bite none-the-less. And the burger was great.

However, from then on, I made a pact with myself. I would promise to look down on establishments that did not serve a steak knife with their burgers for it’s only due to a lack of respect, knowledge, and know-how, that this scenario would ever occur.

So my message to you, is not to settle. Do not become complacent with up-scale burger establishments delivering fantastic burgers with sub-par knifes.

Stand up, for eating burgers how burgers are meant to be eaten.