"burger" news and stories

Photo: roboppy, Flickr

The Hamburglar has been moonlighting as a secretary.

A 34-year veteran of the Westfalen Construction Association in Dortmund, Germany, was fired after eating a burger from her boss's lunch cart.

The 59-year-old secretary, Magdelene H. (her last name was withheld due to German privacy laws), was fired after eating a frikadelle (flat, pan-fried meatball) and two halves of a roll without permission from a buffet she had just finished preparing last July for her boss and his guests, Spiegel reports.

Juicy burger. Photo: wEnDiLicious/Flickr

Can a daily dose of chopped beef really make you stupid?

That's what one Chicago food writer claims, after eating burgers for 65 days straight for Chicago Magazine. "The onslaught of red meat did what drugs and alcohol and fatherhood could not: It made me stupid," Jeff Ruby writes in a humorous piece entitled "Burgers Made Me Dumb."

Ruby chalks up the bouts of stupidity with "a mild case of cognitive dysfunction syndrome. CDS (aka brain fog)."

But can a burger really lower your IQ?

Thought you've made the perfect burger, but instead you get some uneven mass of meat?

Chantelle Pabros, a sommelier at Chicago's L20, is widely considered a rising star of the wine universe. Entrenched among oenophiles since leaving high school, at a mere 26 she has worked alongside world-renowned talent including chef Laurent Gras at his seafood-centric eatery. Though Chantelle has few hard and fast rules about pairing wine with food, she offered a couple tips as we head into prime grilling season. We caught up with her this afternoon to talk burgers and vino.

Do you think burgers and wine go together?
Yes, absolutely. Though we don't have burgers [at L20], I like pairing wine with them. There is this place here called Kuma's Corner. We normally drink beer there, but I am thinking about the possibilities of wines with their burgers.

How does one go about pairing the two?
With pairing, things that you think would go well don't always go. It's trial and error. I start by thinking about the classic burger, cooked medium rare with really fresh lettuce, tomato, onion and a really intense mustard.

Chantelle's five under-$25 burger-friendly wines after the jump.

This photo makes us want to skip on down to Johnny Rocket's, pop the Shirelles on the stereo and sip milkshakes two-straws-to-a-glass -- all before 10am.

But of course what looks to be a simple burger and mac combo platter with a sweet side of Moxie is actually a duck-pork patty slathered with seven-pickle relish accompanied by a gorgonzola and cheddar mac 'n cheese. We're pretty sure that's not what the Fonz was noshing on back in the day. Gotta love that fresh strawberry shake served up in a laboratory glass, too. Click over to the snapshot to learn what those lunchboxes have printed on 'em, part of the cutesy theme at Seattle's Lunchbox Laboratory.

If you're not in our Flickr pool yet it's time to jump in, start tagging photos "slashfood" and show off your skills already. And tell us if this pic makes you get a burger for lunch.