What's the most you'd pay for a burger? $10? $20? How about $1600?
Houston is a city full of burgers, but H-Town’s most absurd burger has arrived at Uptown’s Post Oak Hotel, and it’s going to set you back $1,600.
Rockets owner and hospitality billionaire Tilman Fertitta’s Post Oak Hotel just debuted the “Black Gold Burger” at H Bar, according to a press release. Named for Houston’s oil industry, the burger is made with an entire pound of A5 wagyu beef shipped in from Japan, slabs of seared foie gras, black truffles, and truffle aioli. The burger’s bun is equally decadent, made with Caviar and infused with 24-karat gold.
Of course, a burger of this over-the-top extravagance cannot be paired with mere french fries — instead, there’s a bottle of 2006 Dom Perignon Champagne served alongside. For perspective, that $1,600 can also buy Houstonians roughly 165 SmokeShack burgers from Shake Shack, 14 40-ounce long bone ribeye steaks from B&B Butchers, and about 20 full tasting menu dinners from chef Jonny Rhodes’s Indigo.
Texas Monthly put together a list of all the things you could eat for the same price:
Buckets of Blue Bell
It varies by store and region of course, but a half gallon of Blue Bell ice cream doesn’t usually run more than $6. There are currently 33 flavors of Blue Bell available, which means you could buy seven half gallons of each and every flavor—from Cookie Two Step to Happy Tracks—and still come in well under budget around $1500, after tax.
Whataburger For Days
For the same price as the outrageous burger, you could order 225 Whataburger meals with no cheese, or a whopping 210 Whataburger meals with cheese. Carnivores, rejoice: You could nab 165 Triple Meat Whataburger meals, if you really want to get under Ted Cruz’s skin. If you make it to a Whataburger by 11 am, you could also get 325 Honey Butter Chicken Biscuits, 115 liters of coffee, and about 1625 individual hash browns.
Chicken Express, Chicken Express
Turns out that for $1,600, you could buy every single thing on the Chicken Express menu twice and still have $90 leftover to spend on Tums.
Mountains of Franklin Brisket
Franklin BBQ long ago banned line-sitters, so you couldn’t pay anyone to wait in for you with said cash. Why not pre-order 57 pounds of Aaron Franklin’s brisket and then buy a copy of each of his books instead?
A Lifetime Supply of State Fair Chicken Bread
A night at Dallas’s Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek ($622 after taxes), a Lyft Lux Black XL “spacious luxury ride” from the hotel to Fair Park ($50), a ticket to the State Fair ($16.50 if you buy it online ahead of time), 91 orders of Big Red Chicken Bread, and a Big-Red-flavored donut topped with a chicken wing that wears teeny plastic sunglasses ($15 a pop) would run you less than Post Oak’s burger.
Neverending Chili
Anyone who’s found themselves a couple of Mad Dog Margaritas deep into a “meal” at Austin’s Texas Chili Parlor has joked about splurging on the legendary establishment’s $100 chili dinner: two bowls of chili, one large Caesar salad, and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. Instead of splurging on a truffly steak sandwich and a bottle of Dom, you could treat yourself to the fanciest item on the Chili Parlor fourteen times after you’ve had two Mad Dog Margaritas and still have enough money leftover to take a cab to Waterloo Records and buy Guy Clark’s Dublin Blues—replete with his own ode to Texas Chili Parlor—on vinyl.
Tons of Bàhn Mí
You could get ten of every bàhn mí on the menu at Houston’s Don Café, then cab it over to one of Roostar Vietnamese Grille’s locations (which the Houston Press decided had 2019’s best bàhn mí) buy ten of every kind of sandwich they offer, then taste test your 220 bàhn mí sandwiches at the Houston Press office.
You Gotcha Kolache
A kolache or koblasnek usually goes for something in between one and three dollars, so let’s say the average Czech treat in West, Texas would cost around $2.50 a pop. With that money you could get roughly twelve whole dozens of kolaches from all four of the bakeries at West’s intersection of I35 and Oak Street/T M W Parkway (Czech Stop, Little Czech Bakery, Slovacek’s and my personal favorite, Gerik’s Ole Czech Bakery & Deli) and also fill up your gas tank before you get back on the road.
120 Texas Tacos You CAN Eat Before You Die
With $1,600, you could order two of every dish we mentioned in our November 2015 taco cover story and have enough left over to buy yourself a subscription to Texas Monthly Magazine for the next eighteen years.