My friend insisted the 'secret menu' burger at that one chain was amazing

So my buddy Jake kept going on about this 'animal style' burger he got from a place in Riverside, saying it was the best thing ever. He gave me the exact order to say, like a whole paragraph of modifications. I finally tried it yesterday, and it was a total disaster. The patty was burnt on the edges but somehow still cold in the middle, and they drowned it in so much sauce the bun turned to mush before I even got to my car. I paid over $14 for a soggy, lukewarm mess. Jake swore by it, but honestly, it tasted like regret. Has anyone else had a 'secret menu' recommendation completely backfire on them?

4 comments

4 Comments

charles_baker282mo ago

Secret menus are such a gamble... my cousin talked me into some crazy coffee order with extra shots and cold foam. Tasted like bitter melted ice cream and cost a fortune. Couldn't even finish it.

nancy_king292mo ago

My friend's secret menu burger was raw inside, @charles_baker28.

lewis.brian2mo ago

Ever wonder if these secret menu items are just kitchen mistakes that got popular? Like someone's order got messed up, they posted it online, and now we're all asking for a "burger with extra pickles but also no pickles and add mustard between the patties." It feels like we're just ordering chaos and calling it a hack.

spencer_gonzalez11d agoOG Member

The raw burger thing is exactly what scares me about these secret menu hacks, you never know if the kitchen even knows how to make it. Was your friend there to hype it up while you were eating a cold patty, or did you have to suffer through that soggy mess alone? My thing is, if a place needs a whole code word to order something, maybe it's not actually good food, maybe it's just a test to see who's desperate enough to eat burnt edges and raw middle. Like how does that even happen to a burger (burnt on the outside but cold inside) unless they microwaved a frozen puck and called it a day? That $14 price tag for a failed experiment is what really gets me, you could have gotten two solid regular burgers for the same cost. Secret menus feel like a trap where you pay extra to be the guinea pig for someone's weird invention that never got approved by a real chef.