Cheeburger cheeburger

You had to know I would bring this up. So apparently the French have now made hamburgers trendy and chic. I think this captures everything I dislike about food snobbery. Please read the exact description of how these gourmet ($56) hamburgers should, nay, must be prepared:

“A hamburger is the architecture of taste par excellence,” she explained. “The meat needs to be a mix of fatty and lean. Not raw, not rare. It must be medium rare. At the same time the bread needs to be smooth, tepid, toasted on the sesame side. I like to brush the soft side with butter. There needs to be a crispy chiffonade of iceberg lettuce. Everything plays a role.”

Frankly, when I read this description of hamburger prep, I was downright offended. Hamburgers, much like their cousins, hotdogs, are not a cuisine. They are more part of an experience- what we from New Jersey like to call "the barbeque." Barbeques have coleslaw made with Hellman's mayonaise, water fights, and, if you're lucky, killer margaritas. This is not quite the venue for blackberry ketchup substitute.

If the French are determined to usurp the burger, so be it. We did, afterall, prance off unapologetically with the *fries* and *toast,* though their origins are subject to question. However, I would like to see a new name for these little dandies. For example, "French burger," or "Burger francaise," just so we can make clear we are NOT talking about the same thing.