Cheeseburgers in Paradise

An outdoor hamburger stand is located across from our hotel in the gravel on the side of the road. There is a wooden picnic bench and a standing flat grilltop the size of first base. One woman leisurely flips burgers and heats hotdogs as big as Pinocchio's nose after a giant whopper. I was drawn to the stand for the simple fact that burgers were somewhere around 50 cents (I remembered them as 10 cents, but after conferring with Sami, 50 is probably closer to the truth).

My fascination with cheap burgers runs deep. In high school, whenever McDonald's would run it's 29 cent hamburger or 39 cent cheeseburger special, my friend Josh and I would purchase the maximum allotment of 20. We would take them to his house, unwrap them, and stack them on a plate pyramid style in an attempt to class up the appearance of our feast (note to any female readers: this is how teenage boys think). Of course, what we should have realized was that the paper serves as a necessary heating element, and cold burgers (especially Mickey D's cheeseburgers where the processed cheese gets all congealed and waxy) are nasty. Once we had our girlfriends over and they watched in horror as we stuffed our faces on cold beef and bread. They conveniently left well before we finished so we sat alone and consumed the remainder feeling fat, farty and ashamed. We'd get new girlfriends eventually.

Past experiences should have taught me to abstain from any cheap, roadside burgers in El Nido, or at least temper my expectations regarding flavor. They did not, in either case, and I ended up sampling something inferior to even McDonald's (full disclosure, I actually do love McDonald's. Especially a Big Mac. Former co-workers brought in Big Macs for my birthday one year and I ate two of them shits. One even after my boss took a giant bite and left a sloppy 'U.' I am dirty). It wasn't terrible, but it reminded me more of a burger you would find in Korea- too sweet. Also it had a strange sauce the lady said was ketchup and mayonnaise. No way. Chili sauce and mayo maybe which is too sweet as well. Proving that I have no control whatsoever, I later had one of those long hot dogs. It had that same sauce and it wasn't very good either and I ate every bite.