Minnesota Fats

It sounded like something only a Wisconsin native could crave: a butterburger. As a strict vegetarian from Minneapolis going to college in Madison, I couldn’t imagine anything more disgusting. Yet Culver’s, the fast-food restaurant offering it, were everywhere. For years, I wondered what could possibly be good about a sandwich whose name was so suggestive of an inevitable angioplasty.

I was driving home from the lake recently, and there it was, right along I-94 just outside Albertville: a Culver’s. They’ve expanded their silly operation into Minnesota, I thought; no outer-ring suburb is safe. Traffic slowed and my thoughts came to a similar standstill. I found myself obsessing about butterburgers. A primitive curiosity stirred in my animal-brain: Could it, as the name implies, be a burger coated and fried in butter? Are we living in 1953? There was only one way to find out.

I enlisted a friend to act as a witness—and to drive, in case this experiment somehow went horribly wrong—and we headed for the nearest Culver’s. Twenty minutes later we pulled into the parking lot of a franchise in suburban Plymouth. There were butterflies in my stomach as we approached the door. Here, a G.I. tract that had not seen a hamburger in 12 years was about to do battle with a butterburger. I felt nauseated and tried to turn back, but no way. My carnivorous friend hadn’t driven this far for nothing. This was the moment in our friendship, begun in the early days of my allegiance to a vegetative idealism, that she had been waiting for. We pushed onward.

Inside, the bright lights drew our eyes to the menu, where the plain, unornamented butterburger ranked lowest on a list of doubles, triples, combos, and various other carnival variations. I stepped up and ordered a single deluxe meal. I received an empty soda cup and claim plate number 8.

Now for the moment of truth, which came with the modest price tag of $4.46: What is a butterburger? A hamburger patty cooked in butter? The teenage cashier looked at me sheepishly and explained. “They just butter the bun,” he said. “They’ll bring it out to you when it’s ready.”

I approached the soda machine in a state of mild shock. I pressed “here for ice,” and carefully blended Diet Pepsi with Wild Cherry Pepsi. I unwrapped a straw and paused a moment, deep in thought. Could I truly sacrifice both my stomach and my vegetarian ethics for a mere mortal of a burger—even if it came on a buttered bun? A burger precisely like any other that is mass-produced and mass-consumed all over the world every day? I pumped a splurt of ketchup into a paper cup and considered. We took a seat at one of the plastic booths lining the windows in the dining area. An employee, her blond ponytail spouting triumphantly above her blue visor, set down our trays.

The envelope of fries looked so light and carefree next to the object-in-question. The burger—my burger—was folded recklessly in a body bag of white paper. I flipped it over, stripped it of its wrapper, and peered suspiciously under the crown of the bun. It was indeed buttered. Animal-on-animal action. So I did what any other self-respecting Minnesotan should do: I bit into the butterburger.

And then something unexpected happened. The long-forgotten taste of ground beef invited a flood of hamburger-related memories: childhood birthday parties long flushed out in a sea of salad, family barbeques erased by the voodoo of tofu. It was as American as the Thanksgiving holiday when, almost a decade ago, I had eaten meat for the last time. But it was much better than the dry, overcooked turkey that had so thoroughly turned me off to meat. And I say the wondrous white bun will never be obsoleted by its multi-grained cousin. Not as long as it’s buttered, anyway.


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