This one is going to be short, simply because there isn’t much to it.
TL;DR: “I didn’t take cultural differences into account and made a Discovery. Said Discovery was that tartar sauce is delicious on burgers.”
About 20 or 25 years ago, I was screwing around downtown. While waiting for my bus home, I decided to stop in at this little hole-in-the-wall burger and fish joint. I stopped there periodically back then, and I liked their burgers. I’d had a few and wasn’t thinking too hard, so I ordered a burger with “everything” on it and fries.
The burger had the usual burger stuff. Lettuce, pickles, onions, mayo, etc. It also had tartar sauce. Now, I’m the guy who said to put “everything” on it, so this was all on me. I wasn’t about to have them remake it or whatever.
So I ate it. And holy Elvis was it ever tasty.
Turns out tartar sauce being good on a burger makes perfect sense if you take a few seconds to think about it, which nobody does simply because to most Americans tartar sauce is for fish, not burgers, end of story. If you oversimplify it, tartar sauce is really just mayo and relish with a few seasonings. Pickles are good on burgers. So is mayo. And the difference in seasonings adds a weird little “hey, that’s tasty” element to it.
I’ve been doing it ever since, much to the horror of some people I’ve eaten with and the occasional restaurant server or gas station cashier. Because everyone asks when I either reach for the tartar sauce bottle, grab a couple of packets, or order some on the side and all I have is a burger.
After the burger showed up, I realized my mistake. The place was run by a Lebanese family who had come from the old country, and the place served fish. So when I said “everything,” they took that literally and simply gave me some of everything on the condiment line. Hey, my fault for not realizing there may be a difference in expectations for what goes on a burger between someone who grew up here and someone from the other side of the planet.
Same deal with my great grandmother from the old country who would sometimes do something the way they did back home rather than here. She’s also why I consider it a Good Sign when I don’t hear any English from the kitchen. Holidays at her place always had her and a few of the other old ladies (who weren’t that much older than I am now…) from the old country back there in the kitchen going back and forth in Czech like there was no tomorrow. Go figure since some of them came here in their twenties or thirties and English was definitely a second language for them.
And the food was always amazing.
This burger joint was also where I discovered gyro burgers are the food of the gods. They had a “gyro burger” and “super burger” up on the menu board. Well, their regular burgers had me coming back fairly often, so I figured I’d give a “super burger” a whirl. And received one of their delicious, delicious burgers with a pile of gyro meat on top. Tried the gyro burger later on, and it was just gyro mean without a burger patty. God-damned delicious.
And yes, I ordered them with everything on them.