Big Ugly Man Doll

OK, the Big Ugly Man Doll does not, as a rule, do food reviews for things I didn’t actually cook myself, but we’re making an exception today. If you like meat and you do not live within about 90 minutes drive of the Washington DC metro area, you might want to skip this post and read the last one, which is a good bit and has Number One Son in it.

Because SOBUMD just took me to Ray’s Hell Burger, on Wilson Blvd in Arlington. And yes. Oh, hell yes.

Several years ago, there was a great quote from Car and Driver talking about the then-new VW Touareg. The upshot of the article was hey, this is a nice car, don’t get me wrong, but “to what question is the answer, ‘a $65,000 Volkswagen?’” I’ve since seen the Touareg, and I still don’t have a question to go with that answer.

In the same light, a person might well hear of a place that sells slabs of ground meat on a bun, and wonder to what question is the answer, “a $17 hamburger?”

I can answer that one. The question is, what should you splurge on, once a year, because it’s your birthday, when you’re at Ray’s Hell Burger? You should order “The Burger of Seville,” which lacks only Bugs Bunny on the piano. It’s a massive 10-ounce meal built with freshly ground, hand-trimmed beef. They then pack on foie gras, bordelaise sauce, awe-inspiring mushrooms, and – I’m not even making this up – white truffle oil, on a toasted brioche bun. The guys behind the counter had the cojones to ask if I wanted any side orders. These people are trying to kill me – I think they get kickbacks from the EMTs.

NOTE: Anyone prone to heart disease would do well to recall the subtitle of Rossini’s original Barber of Seville: “The Useless Precaution.” This burger comes with no precautions. Your taste buds will be under full-on frontal attack. They will surrender faster than the French army. And you will love it.

The day being clear and the sky being bright, we ate outside. SOBUMD had a delicious if more classic (read: cheaper) burger, done au poivre with fried onions and Swiss cheese; both were perfectly cooked to order, medium rare. Both dripped juices and grease down our arms as we enjoyed the day, the sun, and the meat.

The bad news is that I finished all of mine, scraped up the stray mushrooms from my plate, then polished off the little bite that SOBUMD was too full to finish. The GOOD news is that the people sitting next to us were Greenpeace activists in town for a lobbying convention, and they were able to mobilize a rescue team to roll me back into the surf. I’ll be fine.

Until next year.

I’ve heard a lot in recent years about eggs being one of the superfoods, something you should eat and enjoy eating, something filled with protein and eggy goodness, the perfect shape, and good for you, too. 

Nobody wants to talk about the dark side.  Nobody tells you about the danger you might be facing.  Take it from me – those things could kill you.

So there I was, busily typing a nomination for sainthood.  The director of the preschool where the Reigning Queen of Pink, High Duchess of Fluff, and Protector of Barbies has attended is a saint.  (If you need a preschool in the Northern Virginia area, you’ll not do better than Accotink Academy.)  Since this was the last day of class, my letter needed to be complete before I dropped her off, and so I awoke early, started the coffee and the, ahem, hard boiled eggs, and went to my typing with my usual vim and vigor.  

As I composed my deathless prose, thanking teachers and staff for seven wonderful years (the Human Tape Recorded and Number One Son both attended as well), I heard the distinctive sounds of said Number One Son being awake in the kitchen.  You know he’s awake because you can hear things being crashed into one another; in this case it sounded like shoes hitting something metallic.

You know this ends badly, right?  OK, you’ve been warned.

SOBUMD wakes up, sees me typing, and pauses to read, listening only in the background to That Boy.  She finally pauses and asks, “What is he doing?”  

“Banging around,” says I, “at least he’s letting me type.”  

Just about then, we heard him hit something a little harder, something that fell with an almighty crash.   I stood up and hastily put on my angry face.  (You know the one – when you’re not really all that mad, but you need to inspire terror just to ensure the lesson is received.  The one that shows that it’s not OK to break things, even if it was something I was going to use for target practice with the cats, because someday it might be something marginally more important – like the actual cat, for example.  So even though you don’t have the energy to work up an actual mad, you have to show mad.  That face.) 

I stride purposefully into the kitchen, looking for the usual suspect, my best mad face up for the game.  The coffee is done and ready.  The kitchen is devoid of life.  What it is not devoid of, however, is eggs. 

Number One Son, blissfully unaware that we’ve been mentally maligning him, is sleeping the sleep of the innocent, upstairs in his bed.  The eggs, which I had put on the back burner of the gas stovetop to boil in the pot full of water, are black as tar, the water having long since hard boiled away.  It is not necessary to put an egg in the microwave to cause it to explode – that’s simply quicker.  Eggs, bits of white and yellow, were everywhere.  The ceiling.  The walls.  Shards of these little cholesterol-laden bombs were more than 15 feet away.  These “hen’s fruit” hand grenades had rattled around in their pot, absorbing energy like small reactors waiting quietly for a critical mass.  

They reached it, then they reached for the sky.  Hard rubber spheres of yoke were bouncing like ping-pong balls on mousetraps, and the whites on the walls looked like Jackson Pollock had painted his idealized representation of Monica’s blue dress on our kitchen.  While hungover. 

I turned off the gas, wishing I could as easily turn off my mind, willing myself to un-see the horrors that lay before me, beside me, above me.  Worse, I knew it was my fault – the prolixity of my deathless thanks had put the eggs on the back burner of my mind just as surely as my hands had put them on the back burner of the stove, not 30 minutes prior.  Oh, the eggnominy!  

My shame turned to anger as I considered the harm that Might Have Been – one of the kids, or the cats, or any hapless kitchen wanderer might have stepped into the line of fire at any time!  Those jagged little shards might have taken someone’s head clean off!  Truly, this is bad cholesterol.  It should come with warning labels.

At least the coffee was good, and SOBUMD was very gracious about not making “egg on my face” or “the yoke’s on you” jokes.  She was also nice about sending me to drop off the Reigning Queen of Pink, High Duchess of Fluff, and Protector of Barbies, along with the letter, while she cleaned up the bulk of the mess (I’d gotten the floor).  

Yep.  Eggs should come with warning labels.  Or maybe I should….