I reported on my mediocre dining experience at Robert Irvine’s Public House in this article — which was published yesterday, Saturday, July 30, 2022 — on the way while walking south on Las Vegas Boulevard to get to the famous sign which welcomes visitors to Las Vegas, as I was in Las Vegas earlier this year with some colleagues to attend a major conference that was hosted by Expedia Group called EXPLORE 22, and at least one person was hungry and needed to eat…
Should I Have Spent $100 For This Hamburger Instead?
…and as the conference occurred in the Aria Resort & Casino hotel complex in Las Vegas on Wednesday, May 4, 2022 and Thursday, May 5, 2022, one cannot help but explore what dining options are available that are within a reasonable distance from the conference — especially if one wants to eat lunch during the middle of the day.
Hey, Las Vegas is a city in which activity is ongoing 24 hours per day, seven days per week. Is lunch at 3:00 in the morning not a possibility?
I laughed when I read this message which was posted on Twitter by Adam Bauer, which poked fun at what I wrote about lunch in the middle of the day…
Lunch in the middle of the day? Who does that? pic.twitter.com/zAM1kZ367t
— Adam Bauer (@TravelFanboy) July 30, 2022
…but I digress.
Speaking of poking fun at me, I am not really digressing; but rather segueing to the topic of this article: among the dining options available at the Aria Resort & Casino hotel complex is an eatery called Posh Burger. Before venturing south to the iconic welcome sign in the middle of Las Vegas Boulevard, I thought that perhaps an inexpensive option — of which not too many exist in the Aria Resort & Casino — would be the way to go until dinner later than evening.
When I went to the lobby area to where Posh Burger was located, it appeared to be an ordinary burger joint with nothing that particularly sets it apart from other burger joints, with a regular hamburger costing $12.00 for a single patty with ketchup, mustard, onion, and pickles, which is not exactly inexpensive…
…until I read about one item on the menu which caught my eye: the Posh Royale Burger, which is comprised of wagyu beef, truffle, foie gras, gold dust, posh sauce, lettuce, tomato, onion, and pickles.
The cost of this hamburger — which reportedly debuted in June of 2021 — is one hundred dollars.
I stood there and wondered if I should “take one for the team” and spend one hundred dollars on a hamburger. That could be a potentially good article about which to write, I thought to myself…
…but I then wondered how many readers thought I would be foolish to spend one hundred dollars on a hamburger — and I then thought to myself if I would get any sort of return on my investment. I mean, restaurants exist where I can dine on better versions of wagyu beef; I am not particularly fond of liver, so foie gras did not exactly appeal to me; and what could gold dust taste like, anyway?
I backed out, as I had already determined that I probably would not have purchased an ordinary hamburger at this place anyway. Why would I spend one hundred dollars on one of these hamburgers when I did not think that a minimum of $17.00 was a good deal if French fries — or some other side item — were added to the order?
As I mentioned in this article, “I certainly do not have what anyone would consider a sophisticated gourmet palate” — so would I have been able to opine on my experience appropriately?
Final Boarding Call
On a side note, did you know that “A $100 hamburger is a generic term used by pilots who fly for an hour or so, grab a bite to eat — not necessarily a hamburger — then fly back home”, according to this article written by Lauren Drewes Daniels for the Dallas Observer? “There was a time when such an endeavor, with gas and food, cost about $100. Thus, a ‘$100 hamburger.’ Now it costs a bit more, depending on the distance, but the original phrase has stuck.”
As for me, did logic get in the way of what potentially could have been a unique experience? Should I have splurged $100.00 on a hamburger? If I did, would anyone have thought I was foolish and poked fun at me — not that that really matters? Would you have wanted to read about that experience?
If I find myself in Las Vegas again and the comments suggest that the article would have been worth writing, I intend to experience the one hundred dollar hamburger. Is that a deal?
More importantly: would you have spent one hundred dollars on this hamburger?
All photographs ©2017 and ©2022 by Brian Cohen.
