http://burgerdays.com

We ate. We drank. A lot. Rolling deeper than ever before, the Crew was out in full force for Burger Days VII earlier this month with a record turnout of more than 20 eaters doing their best Wimpy impressions around DuPont, gobbling up burgers with reckless abandon.  After the grease cleared, the final numbers on the day included 12 hours of grubbing and boozing at seven different downtown spots. We had burgers from four different joints, dogs from two and alcohol from every last one of them. Shake Shack kicked off BDVII with their glorious celebration, Shacktoberfest. Forget bacon and eggs, once you start the day off with a cheese-stuffed-brat-topped burger, everything else is like soggy Corn Flakes in comparison. Seriously, it's sausage. Stuffed with cheese. ON A BURGER. And if that wasn't enough to make us all tingly in our special place, there's goddamn fried onions in there as well. It's an artery-clogging-love-handle-forming-taste-bud-tickling work of art. In addition to our new Breakfast of Champions, we crushed Polish sausages, currywurst, spicy-as-hell mustard-slathered Bavarian brats, cheese fries and stein after stein of the Shack's Oktoberfest booze. In retrospect, it may have been ill-advised to start off where we did, because the rest of the day's feasting couldn't compare.

Clad in lederhosen t-shirts  and with beer steins in tow, we ventured just around the corner for our next stop at The Mighty Pint. Now, we've drunk many a drink at the Pint and maybe even knocked back a basket of fries or two, but had yet to taste their burgers. Maybe we should have kept it that way.

While the menu touted 1/2 pound hunks of beef, the words "hockey" and "puck" were used more than once to describe what was delivered to our tables. Adding to the disappointment, the Mighty Pint Burger sported a beautiful-looking fried egg but our hopes were dashed when we discovered nothing but a hard, chalky yolk hiding under the surface. The memory of Patrick Swayze deserves a lot more than The Roadhouse burger which we could have confused with a bacon-and-cheese-topped slab of rubber. Definitely not Dalton-worthy. The lone burg bright spot, however, was the The Three Dog Night, which managed to deliver the stop's only juicy patty and was topped with an incredibly tasty pulled pork-- however this one escaped the kitchen is beyond us but we were grateful for its jail break. We had a lot more luck on the wiener front because, thankfully, it's hard to screw up a dog. The Mighty Pint shined with both the bacon-wrapped Miss Piggie and chili-cheese-tortilla-strip-bacon-and-jalapeno-sauce-topped El Gordo which were, well, exactly what they sounded like: pretty fucking good.  After the dogs and burgs, much boozing continued at the Pint and then carried over to Madhatter where we regrouped before our faces' next encounter with the beef. A plethora of pints later, we hit up our fanciest spot (at least by Burger Days standards) of the day when we stumbled our greasy asses down to Scion and commandeered the back room for grubbing. 

Now, we'll forgive Scion for the inclusion of the highly overused --and completely bullshit-- term "kobe" in their burger description because, in the end, it was really, really good. If not for our sublime experience at the Shack, this one would have been tops on the day. The "kobe" and sirloin patty (a request for clarification on the meat from Scion wasn't answered) was cooked precisely to each eater's requested order, which is quite a feat considering the kitchen got hit with an unexpected 15-top, all with an affinity for ground beef. The perfectly-cooked patty was enveloped by melted smoked mozzarella, topped with fried pickles and sautéed onions and all of the above was sitting on a slathering of peach ketchup. Bottom line? It all worked extremely well and we wouldn't hesitate to throw this thing inside us again. (One member of the Crew even opted to top this thing with scallops. Ain't that some shit?)

We almost made it out of Scion in respectable fashion but by this point our livers were working overtime and, while not completely booze saturated, they were getting pretty close. So it was fortunate that we only managed to knock one candle holder off the wall. The rest of the night was much of a blur which included a forgettable trip to the new Smashburger (70% of the forgetfulness due to the booze, 30% because of the burgers) and may or may not have ended up with $10 Coors Lights at a certain "nightclub" on M Street.

Put it in the books-- the latest and greatest installment in the Burger Days franchise was a rousing success filled with all things that are good. We feasted and drank with the best of them and along the way discovered a new go-to burger spot on P Street in addition to a place to grab a puck in case an impromptu game of street hockey breaks out in DuPont. Take a breath and regroup-- the countdown to Burger Days VIII begins now.