How Childhood Disappointment Inspired Philly’s Most “Absurd” Burger
A look at the culinary flex born from every time your parents deprived you of McDonald’s.
Honeysuckle’s McDonald’s Money burger / Photography by Kae Lani Palmisano
Welcome to Just One Dish, a Foobooz series that looks at an outstanding item on a Philly restaurant’s menu — the story behind the dish, how it’s made, and why you should be going out of your way to try it.
“Mom, can we get McDonald’s?”
“Well, do you have McDonald’s money?”
Many of us have this memory tucked away in our collective conscience — a universal craving for fast food that we just can’t shake. It’s an experience chef-owners Omar Tate and Cybille St. Aude-Tate wanted to capture with their Best of Philly-winning McDonald’s Money burger at Honeysuckle.
Everything Tate and St. Aude-Tate create has a story behind it, and that is absolutely the case for this burger. Because this dish is not just an homage to the Big Mac. It is an artistic representation of childhood disappointment transformed into playful spite. This is the kind of masterpiece that could only be dreamed up when the yearning for what you can’t have intensifies, when you are haunted by every time your mom passed by those golden arches and your pent-up desire for burger bliss spirals out of control. This burger — this exaggeration of what it feels like when your mom finally acquiesces to your pleas for Mickey D’s — is retribution on a bun.
“We wanted to make it as absurd as possible,” says St. Aude-Tate. And absurd it is: Two all-beef patties — seasoned with a holy trinity of bell pepper, celery, and onion — nestle between buttery slices of toasted shokupan milk bread, with a layer of caramelized malt vinegar onions on the bottom, and Cooper sharp cheese and caviar remoulade on top. If that’s not enough, a generous coating of 24-karat gold leaf, Périgord truffle, and a cornichon top the whole thing off.
It seems excessive, but it works. The briny pops of caviar heighten the mouthwatering tanginess of creamy remoulade, which is starkly contrasted by the savory sourness of the malt vinegar onions, but it’s all brought together by Cooper sharp-topped patties, a mellow middle ground between the two polarized flavors. It’s breathtaking. Literally. The whole thing is so juicy you have to slightly inhale and drink up every bite — something you’ll do with gusto because you won’t want to waste a single ounce.
The add-on dish — which costs $65, roughly 10 times more than a Big Mac from the Oregon Avenue McDonald’s, and is worth every cent — is a hit with diners but also only available in limited quantities. They only make 10 to 20 a night. “I definitely urge folks to come in and split it with someone else,” says St. Aude-Tate. “But I think that’s the best way to eat it.”
I split the McDonald’s Money burger with my mom last May, one week after Honeysuckle opened. And when it arrived at our table — gold leaf shimmering in the candlelight, caviar remoulade cascading down the side like it was staged for a Super Bowl commercial, accompanied by a little red box of perfectly salted French fries — my mom howled with laughter, then began reminiscing.
She told me about how she and my uncles used to beg my grandparents to take them to McDonald’s so much, they started finding different routes home, so the kids wouldn’t catch a whiff of fries on the wind. She admitted that she employed the same tactic when I was a kid, but tried to make up for it with dry, overcooked burgers with slices of Kraft cheese and ketchup that would soak through the slices of Wonder Bread — a far cry from the sturdiness of a sesame seed bun.
But we also talked about the times we did swing by Mickey D’s. There was the annual pilgrimage for the sickeningly minty Shamrock Shakes, and that spring in 1997 we spent hunting for all the Teenie Beanie Babies. And, of course, all of the times she’d walk up to the counter and demand fresh fries if the ones we were originally served came out cold and soggy. “I wasn’t about to spend my money on cardboard,” she said, using the same reasoning she has been for decades.
As caviar remoulade glopped onto my chin and thin shavings of Périgord truffle floated down to my plate like leaves in autumn, I thought about how funny it was that two generations could share the same experience. “It’s a very hilarious moment that resonates with a lot of folks, regardless of where you come from, regardless of how you were raised,” says St. Aude-Tate. “It’s just really important that we were able to capture that moment and put it on the menu in hopes that folks bring their moms to Honeysuckle and be like, ‘Ma, we got McDonald’s money now.’”
