Monday, September 14, 2009

The Greatest Michigan News Ever. Unqualified.

Last year at about this time, I embarked on a noble and spiritually-inspired journey to eat a whole bunch of hamburgers. There is a little bit more to the journey than just this, but that was the basic premise. I ate a bunch of hamburgers, wrote about them in this here internet writing thingy, and I continue to eat burgers in a less-specific and unstructured way. I have deviated from my ultimate goal in that I am not pushing myself through the specific list and I am simply failing to finalize write-ups on the burgers I am eating. I have myriad reasons for my failure in this area, including but not limited to moving, marrying, honeymooning, working, etc., but the bottom line is I am not doing my job for you, the reader. In other areas of the blog I feel that I am vastly exceeding your expectations simply because I have not given up yet and I still write with some frequency, and the cherry on top being that my writing remains totally and 100% awesome. We all know it.

But in the burger area, I am reminded of my failure every day simply by waking up and reflecting on my accomplishments and failures of the last 24 hours. I actually never do this and have never done this before, but it seems like it could be a good idea. Note to you: try this and let me know how it goes and if it is worth it.

BurgerFest-O-Rama lives on in spirit and I still have realistic hopes for its triumphant return. The reason this is important is because one of the restaurants that inspired the journey and default best-burger-in-the-universe-until-proven-otherwise, The Redcoat Tavern in Royal Oak, Michigan, is expanding its Michigan footprint. I guess the Redcoat owners also owned Zinc Brasserie and Wine Bar in West Bloomfield, and they have decided to do away with their fancy-pansy Wine Bar and replace it with a slightly creepy red-lighted restaurant that serves the finest burgers in the land. The article from The Freep also indicates that the owners are considering opening 1-3 MORE Redcoats in our fine state. If the prospect of having a Redcoat Tavern closer to you does not excite you, you have no soul or joy of living. This is the greatest thing that could happen to our state - including unemployment closer to 5%. That is entirely untrue, but it's still pretty great news. Every time I am in a group and I mention Redcoat, someone looks toward me and gives me that little head nod to indicate they know what I know. This isn't a small club of lovers and I'm not claiming to know any secret fact about the burger greatness with waits of greater than an hour at pretty much any time or meal of the day, but it's still fun to evangelize the glory of meat when cooked correctly and served with perfect onion rings.