Burger 'n a pint

Almost every week, I go to my favorite pub and purchase a burger and a pint with a side of fries. But here's an innovation I and 10 million others saw on Twitter this week: a burger in a pint. 

Like an orange wrapped in plastic on a store shelf, it's not quite right. Of course, in that case, the perversity is that the orange is already self-contained; the plastic is superlatively wasteful. In this case, it's pure inanity, a square peg in a round hole, even though it's a cylindrical peg in a cylindrical container.

The original tweet has 117k likes as I write this. The appeal is clear: transgression without transgression. It's something you've never seen before, let alone considered. Burgers are meant to be eaten hot and fresh. If they're contained, it's in a greasy paper wrapping. There's also the caption, "MEal prepping some cheeseburgers for this week," the implication that this guy has a stack of at least four more of these ready to sit in his fridge, that he'll be eating a five-day-old pint-burger on Friday.

It's an annoying image — why have you done this? Why would you do this to a burger? Just eat the damn thing! But it inspires only a false, minor fury that quickly turns to laughter; it's not actually transgressive; it's just a little quirky.

But it's a beautiful image. The way the burger doesn't quite squeeze all the way in, the air pocket between the bottom of the bun and the container, the splash of tomato and lettuce, the tongue of the patty tipped against the plastic.

What really makes the in-pint composition is the cheese itself — this was clearly a freshly cooked burger. The humidity, of course — it’s radiant. But the melted cheese pushing sliding down the walls is indispensable.

The Twitter user who posted the burger in a pint is an avid cyclist; take a look at his page. It’s his whole schtick (in his bio: “transit planner & local bike guy”). In a reply to the original tweet, he says, “DAMN THIS BLEW UP!!! I love my wife” — so I’m assuming his wife made him a burger and put it in a pint container so it’d be safe for his bike ride.

The burger in a pint is, in the end, a token of everyday love, like the last bite. Like walking in the rain, two people with one umbrella, and you’re holding it, and you’re holding it further to the left, to make sure she’s fully covered, letting your right side get a little damp to keep her dry, even though the wind’s gonna blow the rain all over you both.