A Ledgered Meal: Whataburger, DFW, Texas
A Helsinki Dérive, Part One
A “world traveler” is the last thing I’d call myself, yet I find myself occupying a table at Hakaniemen Kauppahalli in Helsinki, attempting to tame hunger pangs and jet lag with a Pepsi Max and an apple-filled Munkki, the Finnish donut isotope, while questioning whether I should have sprung for what appears to be phó that the folks at down the hall are enjoying.
Two days ago we passed through Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, one of a variety of ways to get from PDX to Vantaa, a flightpath we inadvertently discovered when Nancy got rerouted that way after a canceled connection totally rewrote her itinerary. Her field report from that particular layover cursorily mentioned the presence of a Whataburger in Terminal D.
As fungible as a meat patty on a bun should be, local, regional, and even international variations of the humble hamburger can be embraced as emblems of allegiance. Californians have their In-n-Out with their off-the-menu items. Burgerville holds sway in Oregon and Washington. You can go to the Nordic countries for the Hesburger or Bastard Burgers, or zoom in super-local to Mike's Drive-In or The Tulip Shop Tavern in Portland, Oregon. If you're from Texas, then Whataburger could very well be an emblem of civic identity, rivaled only by the relatively recent usurper: the Buc-ee's Beaver.
And thus a Houston upbringing indelibly inked Whataburger onto my psyche. As a child, a trip to McDonald’s might have been a special treat, yet at some point what was a notable culinary event became background noise, while the characteristic A-frame, orange-and-white outposts of Whataburger became anchor points for adolescence. The TV commercials featuring country singer Mel Tillis powering his way through his stutter; the Senior Patrol Leader of my Boy Scout troop demonstrating how they chop lettuce at the Whataburger where he became a part time assistant manager; the tale of the local dope fiends hitting the drive-thru for chocolate milkshakes to assuage the munchies.
We used to live a few minutes away from a Whataburger; I posit that every place I’ve lived in or worked at has been a few minutes away from a Whataburger. The locations near the office would be a frequent go-to for lunch; the one near our home is where we’d hit for “taquitos”—breakfast burritos that somehow got renamed, because that’s what Texas does to Mexican food. Most notably those bacon, egg, and cheese bundles would provide sustenance and soothe the loot rage after we finally went offline from our World Of Warcraft guild’s Icecrown Citadel raids. For whatever reason, that particular location proved popular at 2AM on a Sunday morning—clubbers and other night owls who probably held zero grudges against the Lich King.
About a decade ago we left the Barony of Whataburger and found ourselves in the Land of Burgerville, a completely fit-for-purpose purveyor of burgers with the annual Walla Walla onion ring event that is a cause for celebration, at least until you dig into a basket of those panko-breaded wonders and decide that these oily tori should only be consumed once a year. So when we retreaded the PDX-DFW-HEL trail last year for my first visit to Finland, the chance to revisit Whataburger, even as an airport incarnation, was tempting; however, as we approached that stretch of Terminal D, I was reminded of something that I’d not quite forgotten but utterly minimized: the odor.
As unappetizing as this sounds, Whataburger has a particular smell of fry oil and burger patty spatter that’d been seasoning those A-frame buildings for years; it imbues you when you dine in, it permeates the drive-thru bags, and you take a whiff of it with you when you get your order to go. That “eau de Whataburger” is an ambient olfactory fingerprint that apparently can turn on you like a frenemy, because it became the stick in the spokes of memory that threw me off the nostalgia bike last year; however, two days ago, I would not be deterred.
I put up with the crowds, the self-serve kiosk, and the wait for a Whataburger with cheese combo, with a “medium” order of fries (quotes included for scale - that helping of potato sticks would rate a “large” in lesser fast food chains) and a 32-ounce orange-and-white styrofoam cup for a drink. They still serve iced tea in the same towering metal tanks: one unsweetened, the other holding a five-pound bag of sugar in suspended solution (once you’ve witnessed the tea crew do that to a batch of industrial-grade Lipton, it’s impossible to un-see). Trailing that Whataburger parfum, I found a place to sit and laid out the contents of the bag, a moment to assess before digging in...
...and had a flashback: In 2018, Nancy and I visited Norway, and when I told my co-workers of our vacation plans, a colleague advised me that food is incredibly expensive there and that a Burger King combo meal would set you back $20. While wandering in Bergen, I found myself at the counter, doing the mental math for a Whopper combo, and shelling out the money for the privilege of consuming a universally available flame-broiled burger in Norway. Just because you can often means that you do exactly just that. And with that bite into the Whataburger with cheese, I got hit with that Bergen moment. Why? Why not indeed?
I wouldn’t know what regret tastes like, because that’s not what I ate two days ago in Dallas. Questionable menu choices, or nostalgia-driven impulse decisions? Nope, just a mouthful of memories with American cheese and grilled onion, the tang of mustard and ketchup with the smooth undercurrent of extra mayo, plus the crunch of the iceberg lettuce that they still chop the same way they’ve been doing it since the 1980’s.
Eight time zones later, the Munkki is another memory to be ledgered later, and Nancy finds me typing away on a draft of this essay. What I thought was phó is actually Lohikeitto, a creamy salmon soup with dill and potatoes, which I ordered for both of us, with a plate of freshly sliced bread atop a pool of olive oil. The soup is some of the most comforting and delicious stuff I’ve had, with none of the fishy brine or overbearing dill, a deft demonstration of culinary balance. In fact it will spoil me for fresh-tasting salmon for the foreseeable future.
If that Whataburger with cheese and grilled onion were a recursive blast of a past, then the meal in the Kauppahalli should be a forward-facing waypoint; however, I've just documented that memory doesn't necessarily line up, but stacks. Messily like a burger assembled under a timer for frequent fliers seeking a quick bite instead of a nostalgia trip.