What’s Up With Strange Hybrid Burgers?
The Cronut craze has given birth to new, stranger food hybrids – including two burgers that became popular last week. One which is actually for sale, and one which is more of a mad scientist type of project. Neither strike me as appetizing — so why the hype?
The burger pictured above, the Shoyu Ramen Burger, made its debut in New York last Saturday at Smorgasburg –– a flea and food market in Williamsburg. Over 200 people showed up in the rain before the market even opened to try one of these things. The Shoya team only had enough ingredients for about 150 burgers, thus selling out immediately.
The burger pictured below is an Umami Burger stuffed between a Cronut — a riff on the Luther burger which is a burger that uses a doughnut as a bun. The writer who created this hybrid out of two wildly popular food trends said of his project: “To combine the Cronut and the Umami Burger into one Lutheran package would be the ultimate hype-on-hype-on-hype, fat-on-fat-on-fat, zero-f—-given, brunch-on-dinner-on-dessert #hashtag feast.” Yum?
What is it about hybrid foods that makes them so appealing? A croissant-doughnut hybrid is one thing (and it really is delicious), but do you actually want to eat a burger than uses ramen as a bun? Or is it simply because its so strange and “new” that makes it interesting? Or is it the line that forms, the wait, the anticipation that drives these food trends?
(Images: Village Voice, First We Feast)