Fine Dining - Septemburger 2026: It Ends Here!!

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

🍔🏆 Septemburger 2026: The Semi-Finals & FINALE! 🏆🍔 It all comes down to this! Joyce, Miranda Coker (@miranda_writes114), Sandy Rose, and Seif Rahoumi (@seifrahoumi) return as Septemburger 2026 reaches its conclusion! Four chains remain, two matchups stand between them and the championship, and naturally, everyone is still cutting wrestling promos like these burgers have personally wronged them. 👑 BurgerFi's CEO Burger Enters the Semi-Finals with Joyce in Its Corner 🤠 Miranda & I Grade Fatburger's Western Bacon BBQ Burger ⚔️ BurgerFi vs. Fatburger: Which Burger Earns a Spot in the Finals? 🧅 Sandy & I Dig into MOOYAH's Well D'Onion 🥓 Seif & I Discover Some Truly AWFUL Bacon on Five Guys' Little Hamburger 🥊 MOOYAH vs. Five Guys: Only One Can Advance! 🎤 The Wrestling Promos Continue as Everyone Talks an Incredible Amount of Trash 🚫 Seif Should Be Cancelled 🏆 Two Burgers Survive the Semi-Finals, But Only ONE Can Become the SEPTEMBURGER 2026 CHAMPION! 💬 COMMENT BELOW: Did the right burger win Septemburger 2026? 📢 SUPPORT THE SHOW & JOIN THE COMMUNITY:🎉 Patreon (Bonus episodes, extended Yelp segments & more): patreon.com/finediningpodcast 💬 Discord (Food talk, memes, cursed Yelp): discord.gg/6a2YqrtWV4 🎥 Watch full episodes: youtube.com/channel/UCLbraNhL6KhDPkdSWt2yiuw 🔗 All links: linktree.com/finediningpodcast 🎤 Guests: Joyce, Miranda Coker (@miranda_writes114), Sandy Rose, & Seif Rahoumi (@seifrahoumi) Patreon Producers:Sue Ornelas, Joyce Van, & Robert McLaughlin Patreon Subscribers:David Ornelas, Kellie Baldwin, Jeremy Horwitz, Herbert Amaya, Simone Davalos, Scott Bennett, Amy Reinhart, Josef Castaneda-Liles, Travis Langley, & Michelle Elmer Free Patreon Followers:Joe Warszalek, Lauren Cummings, Grace Krainak, Keri Estes, Robert Duran, Patrick Elliott, Dave Plummer, Nicholas Volney, Michael Gerard, Tracy Molino, Phuong Duong, Tyler Robinson, Brandon Gully, Mason Cruz, Michael Milito, Mez, Aaron Hubbard, Steff, Renae Michael, Crystal C., NiZ, Science Broe, Jahid Ahmed, Jewell Hermann, Macky Markar, Morawski4, Kellie Bowes, Debra Ramsey, Jorge Gabriel Méndez Arrambide, James BacKHouse, & Kimberly Burk 👉 NEXT WEEK: Septemburger is over and regular programming returns! 🌭 I dive into the history of Wienerschnitzel with David Luong!

Burger versus burger, bun versus bun. We're at the end of Septemberger 2026, and we're down to just four chains. By the end of this episode, we will have our winner. I'm Michael Lornellis, host of the Fine Dining Podcast, and welcome to the final September. In the first round, we said so long to Habit Burger and Grill as Muya sailed past them with relative ease. Then five guys walked up to Smashburger and ground them into a little bit. a patty so thin, they were unable to continue the competition.

A week later, BurgerFi usurp the throne from Burger King, and just last week, Fat Burger said, you're out of here to McDonald's. This week, Fat Burger takes on BurgerFi while Five Guys is matched against Muya, who will emerge

the victor? You're gonna freaking find out so soon, but first, theme song. I ate 24 burgers at eight different chains with my guests, and 10 of them will never get talked about because of their eliminations. Let's take a moment of silence for our fallen, undiscussed comrades. Okay, enough with honoring the dead. Let's make more dead and see who can emerge victorious in our first matchup.

It's the number one seed Fat Burger against the number four seed burger. I ate at BurgerFi first with my partner Joyce back in June, so let's cut to our chat about the CEO Burger. So BurgerFi advanced to the semifinals by beating Burger King, so it's time to evaluate their round two offering the CEO burger. This is the one that based on the Yelp reviews I read seemed like the star of the show, but it was not the best burger we had there. So if they get past this round, that'll be in round three, the breakfast all day burger.

That one was very good. But the CEO burger, this was a burger with Wagyu beef instead of just like the standard. And it had a candied bacon tomato jam and a truffle aoli. And then it would have aged Swiss if this was a cheeseburger tournament, but it's a hamburger tournament. And I'm back with Joyce, of course, my girlfriend, my beautiful, lovely partner. Hello. We can hold hands. Good.

Yeah. What'd you think of this one? I thought it was too sweet. It reminded me. Too sweet. Interesting. I know you said it was tomato based, right? Well, what I got out of the bacon jam was bitter.

I thought it was a little bitter. I thought it was too. sweet for me. It reminds me of all the burger places where they do the Elvis burger with peanut butter and jelly. That does have the peanut butter. They don't, they don't have the peanut butter, but it just reminded me of that. Anything sweet

that's supposed to be savory. I'm not the biggest fan. I can take like one or two bites and after that I'm good. Yeah, sweet and meat are not two things that I like much, but like I think of interstellar barbecues, peach tea glazed pork belly. And that's

a really good mix of savory and sweet. And You like that one, right? Yeah. I don't think it doesn't go together. The flavor and sweet is just the jam with the burger. It was too much jam for me, I think. Yeah. Again, bitter is the adjective that I remember feeling with it.

I thought that the truffle aoli could have been more prominent. I think I wanted a little bit more of that flavor profile. It wasn't truffly enough for me. But I thought that the bun, the soft bun, and the wag you, went great together. So I really enjoyed some elements of this. I do like a tomato bacon jam, and I feel like here may have been my least favorite iteration of tomato bacon jam that I've ever had. That's the first time I've ever heard a tomato bacon jam concoction. I've only ever had it on burgers, I believe. And I think I've had it on like a breakfast burger, specifically somewhere else,

not a chain, but just like a one-off restaurant. And I remember it being a really good, there. But this was good, but I could see all the potential for how much better I thought it could or maybe should have been. And the wag you didn't elevate it as much as I thought it would. I gave it a 6.81, which is only three hundredths less than I gave the round one burger. But to really do well in the September Ger tournament, you do need to kind of have your score go up each round. So even a small drop here, I think might hurt them. But if I remember correctly, your score is quite a bit lower. So, yeah, we'll see if this knocks BurgerFi out.

But what's your score for? Does a breakfast sandwich have a chance if I score it too low? We'll add it or increase it. I'm not letting you put your thumb on the scale right now to change how you felt about it. This was just my little. But, yes, the breakfast burger was really good. This was just my least favorite of the three burgers because I felt like it was too meaty. Yeah.

And too sweet. Yeah. I think it's a lot of flavor. I feel like you described me that way before. No. I'm so sweet. And meaty. I'm kind of meaty.

But I think people would enjoy this burger. I think it's just a preference. It's not lacking like juiciness or flavor or anything like that. I think it's just not my preference. Yeah. I thought that the jam turned me off a little bit here to where it just. It was a much better idea than it was executed. And the fact that I got bitter from it while you got sweet from it is...

I have no idea where you got the bitter from. Well, I just remember when I took the first bite, I kind of like winced. Interesting. What was your score on this burger? 5.4. So when you put our scores together, this gets a 6.11. So it's not an abysmal score. It's not like it's impossible for them to advance.

but we got to turn to their competition and we'll see what happens. Okay, BurgerFi, before we cut to the top competitor in Fat Burger, you got to make us want to see the fight. What do you have to say? Hey, Fat Burger, you think you're fat and juicy? Nope, you're not. You're thin and dry and nobody wants you. No one can even grab any part of you because you're not fat and juicy. Did you hear me?

You're not fat and juicy. or juicy. I don't even know why anybody goes eat you because nobody wants to eat you. People want to eat me. I'm burger five and I am delicious and no one will beat me. I will win September the champion of burgers and you can eat me alive. I don't know that part. That's weird. Obliterated. Fat burger, what is your response? Our fat burger here and we're We're calling out you, Burger-Fi. You with your CEO burger? We're going to not get a business with our Bacon Western Barbecue Burger. Oh, yeah, you think you're all cool with your truffle aoli? Well, people are pigging out over here at Fat Burger. Oh, yeah. Real suit and tie, people.

That's not where we're all about. We're going to kick your ass in September. Okay, wow, powerful. The gloves are off. Let's hear from Miranda Coker and review Fatburger's Western Bacon Barbecue Burger. We are here in the Septemberger semifinals. Fat Burger had really close competition with the McDonald's Big Mac. So close. 8.01 to 4.37.

McDonald's was nipping at their heels. Yeah. It just, yeah, Fat Burger won by a hair. the longest hair. But it is in round two. So now we're up against burgerfi and the CEO burger. Their burger that had Wagyu beef. It had a truffle sauce.

It was a good burger. Only scored a 6.11. Crazy. I've also never heard of burger pie. So I'll have to try that. They're not close. The one that I did was in a suburb of Chicago. Oh, okay.

So, oops. They are in certain parts of the country. You will find them. Okay. It's not here. Gotcha. But they are good. They're worth checking out for sure.

So up against the CEO burger, we have the Western Bacon Barbecue Burger from Fat Burger. And this was as advertised. It was bacony. It was barbecuey. Both flavors I thought came through. But this had, I don't know what they took off of the original Fat Burger. because the original fat burger has mayo, mustard, lettuce, tomato, pickles, onion, relish,

mustard patty, and bun. This, I think, replaced all the sauces. I don't think there was mayo or mustard on this. So it was a barbecue sauce. It also had an onion ring in it. And it also had bacon. And then it had a couple of the things. I don't think I tasted relish.

I don't know if I tasted pickle. I could be wrong. I wasn't paying that close of attention. But the flavor profile was so predominantly barbecue and bacon. so it was just very savory, that a lot of those other flavors didn't come through. And I don't mean that as a criticism. I kind of don't want them to come through in this case. To me, it would be at odds with what a barbecue bacon burger offers.

Gun to my head, you could have quizzed me about any other ingredient on that burger twice for like. Who's putting a gun to your head? Who's putting it? The stakes are not that high, Miranda. Hey, for this, they are. Answer the question. What did you think of this burger? I thought that it just tasted like.

like barbecue and bacon and meat. And I, again, got to my head of view, be like, list what other ingredients were on that burger besides for meat and sauce. I could not tell you. You have to. Well, don't make me pull the trigger. Well, you're going to watch me die today.

Oh, no. Direct to camera. Yeah, I feel similarly, but what's advertised is what you get. You get bacon. You get barbecue. you, and we were in the West. A quality that I found in both this burger and then the Thousand Island burger.

The too saucy. Oh, sauce city. Yes. Wet burgers immediately. It was so much. Like, we, for all the burgers, we, like, cut in half and, like, split it. And this one, like, specifically, like, I took, like, my first bite and immediately just, like, sauce everywhere. I felt like a slop.

If I want to have a burger, I wanted to be, like, more contained and not feel like I'm a child immediately. Right. Which could be using. error most likely. No, I have, as a man with a beard, I end up with sauce in it a lot. And I was actually surprised that I was able to keep my face clean with this one. It was a lot of sauce, but the spongy bun, I felt managed to contain it away from my body in a way that I appreciated. But I do not disagree at all with the idea that this was too saucy.

It kind of felt like for me with all the barbecue sauce and then the like pork of like the bacon and like the meat and stuff, it kind of felt just like a pulled pork sandwich experience. Slabbing some meat and barbecue sauce on like a bun, which I do love a pulled pork sandwich. I do love a bold pork sandwich. But if I'm having a burger, I want any sort of burger I want burger first and then the fun of Kuchramans are going on there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this felt like a Kuchraman forward and it's not necessarily what I'm looking for in a burger. And so this is my weakest of the three. But it still performed well.

I had it in the high end of good, almost great. But I would just call this a really good burger. I went 7.43. And I went 7.42. All right. So we really honed in on objectively where this burger falls. Yes. It will round up when you put the two scores together to a 7.43, which is better than a 6.11.

So that means fat burger. heading to the finals of September. Hey, Burgerfy, you're out of here. So dumb. And that settles it. Fatburger is going to be one of our finalists in this year's tournament. Now we have to find out who their opponent will be. Five guys, the number two seed in this tournament, is up against Muya, the number three seed.

Let's start by hearing about the well-donean from Muya with my guest, Sandy Rose. Okay. So, Muya trounced the habit burger in round one. Nice. Trounced it. I say a lot. I love the habit, too. Yeah.

Yeah. I liked it just fine. Yeah, let me downgrade love to like it. The habit's good. Yeah, yeah. Now, one of the things that I have seen in many years, of doing September burger is does the second round keep the consistency? Now, you have a basic burger, and in the case of Muya, you have a beef patty and a bun

that is really strong, and that beef patty and bun are on all of their burgers. Does that mean that adding stuff is better or worse? And I think in the case of the, we got the well done. The weld onion was their certified English beef, onions, grilled onions, fried onion strings, lettuce, spicy ranch, and their signature potato bun. Oh, okay. I was wondering why this thing had a kick, spicy ranch. I just now read that too and learned as well. It makes sense.

Okay. This was very onion-y. It was. It was three types of onions in what you just read, grilled onion. I didn't even realize there was that many onions. Regular onion fried onion strings. I love fried onion strings. onion strings as a topping just in general. I do too. I think nowhere does it better than islands. I think

islands, the island reds is what they call them, but they're red onion. That's even better than the bloomin onion? I'm not saying that. I'm saying as a burger topping, the fried onion strings. Okay. The bloominion is an untouchable creation handed down by God. By Jesus Christ Superstar to man. Yeah. Yeah. And then I wrote that this had a kick to it. And I'm now here. the spicy ranch. I was like, oh, that makes sense. Now, what was working for this for me was the fact that it didn't taste ranchy. I don't really love a ranch. I would have loved like a spicy aoli. Hearing spicy ranch to me is a turnoff. It didn't taste ranchy, therefore I was okay with it. I felt like this was a step down. I felt that the onions distracted from how good the burger and bun work.

Yeah. But I like onions. I liked all of these onions. And I still liked this burger quite a bit. I just didn't like it as much as the other one. Now you can hit them with the fact. You can literally drop an elbow off the top rope with the fact that you seem to have hated this. Yeah.

It wasn't my favorite. No offense to Mr. Onion. And I do also love a... Mr. Dunyan. His name is Mr. Dunyan. That's true. he's the uncle and the family

I liked it the name I let it was really cute clever name yeah it was just too tangy for me tangy's the word I wrote and now that I know the sauces I think it was a combo of the sauces together and I don't love raw onion

and so no that that was on there too and the weird part is that one of the things I like most about a smash burger in general is like the grilled caramelized onions on it. Yeah. So I was looking forward to this one. And again, I love a fried onion too. I don't know. I don't know what it was about the combo of flavors of this one. Or maybe it was just the fact that it was right after the first, the MDC that was like, oh, that was a great burger. And this one was just like fun. Yeah. Yeah. But it did not score high for me. What did you score it? Three point one five. Three point one five. Yeah. So that's not good. That's a not good burger you would call this not good. I didn't want to finish it. I. I, would call this a good burger. I liked it well enough. Still a step down. I went 7.79. Wow. Big difference. Quite a differential between us. I also don't love a fancy burger. Like, if I'm getting a burger, I just want a burger taste. And it just strayed too much from a burger formula for me.

I see. Well, your 3.15 with my 7.79, I believe is a 5.47 average. Okay. Solid still. So a middling burger on the high end of middling when you average how different people might receive it. I don't know if a 5.47 can advance muya to the finals, but it still has a shot. It's very possible that whoever's on the other end of the bracket could drop the ball in the middle burger as well. This is where scores tend to be the lowest is round two because we try three. and the highest scoring of the specialty burgers is what goes on to round three, while the basic is always round one. So if they drop the ball anywhere, it's going to be round two.

Okay. Happened here, but Muya, not out of the game yet. We'll see how it does. Muya, before we cut to five guys, do you have anything you'd like to say to them first? It's me. Muya, coming for you. Five guys? That's not even a fair match I could take on 10.

20, 50 guys! That's right, you're going down. I got the best buns in the game, honey. You ain't got a match for me. I'm going to come for you. Let me hear it. You know the catchphrase. Move out of the way.

My goodness gracious. Five guys, do you have a rebuttal? You say we're going up against moo-ya? More like poo-ya. Stinky, stinky burgers. Stinky, stinky name. stinky, stinky hall of dung, you're nothing. You're just a stinky place that nobody wants to go to.

We've got history. We've got power. We've got clean ingredients. All you got is pooh, poo, poo, poo, poo, poo, poo. Die by s s**. I don't think you're allowed to say that. But before we cancel my guests, say for a homie, let's hear what else he has to say about the five guys

little hamburger. Okay, here we are in the semifinals of the September Tournament. Five guys beat Smash Burger in round one by point three. Demolished. Demolished. Destroyed. Destroyed them.

Whosh. Smashed that burger. Oh, as they might say. And in round two, look, the round two curse is real. You got to prop up that middle one. And I don't know. I don't know if that happened here. I do know that it didn't happen.

You know that it didn't. So we got the little hamburger with bacon. So they have a little bacon burger, which is just single patty versus the standard hamburger, which is double patty. And we got jalapeno, the bacon, grilled onions, grilled mushrooms, and A1 sauce. A1 sauce is just not my favorite flavor. it's got like a cheapness to it. I don't know. Yeah, yeah.

It doesn't taste elegant. And like, that's what you want from a five guys burger. I review chain restaurants, but I expect fancy. Some class. Some class. Yeah. No. And in Five Guys' defense, we did choose everything that was on this burger.

But that's the nature of them not offering specific burgers on the menu. They have to be ready for that. They don't have a North Star to guide you with. That's true. They're like, it's up to you. Here's a list. Here's a list of ingredients, right? That's true.

And so the mushrooms, I thought were too mushy. Yeah. These were too soft. And like, I don't know, I don't know what I want. I don't want a hard mushroom. Mushrooms are a tricky beast with me. Yeah. I think I like diced up mushrooms to where it's like.

It was fat. These were like fat mushrooms. Yeah. And it felt like, this is such a specific thing that I did as a kid, that's psychotic. Sure. when you go to like a pool and there's those pool noodles and you like want to sink your teeth into them and like I don't know about when you go I don't know if it's that much of a common thing yeah I used to leave my bite marks on pool noodles sometimes I would chew them off damn do you like swallow no no no of course not that would be crazy that would be

crazy it was something very satisfying about being like I can cause destruction I'm intrigued I might do this as an adult I'm planting a seed But yeah, that's exactly what the mushrooms were like Literally what I was thinking That's crazy And the jalapinos My points of comparison are so relatable The jalapinos

And don't come at me I didn't taste them They just like weren't spicy They didn't have any like kick to them They were not spicy at all Not at all Not even a little Yeah

The bacon. Oh, yeah, you could get started on this. This was the start of a realization that their bacon batch today was all around funky. Maybe in general. It wasn't good. Yeah. And I got bacon on four things. One of them being my milkshake.

But that's for the episode, and we've already done that episode. You can go back and listen to what I thought about that. But the bacon just tasted wrong. Yeah. And so it was a very prominent, like, funk off taste. It was, and the texture was very, like, almost like dusty. Is that a good word? The bacon?

Yeah. Yeah, kind of. It was really gross. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was from the 1920s. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it felt like it was, like, cooked, yeah, in the last century, and they've been, like,

preserving it. Yeah. Well, I did also find a Yelp review of this place. Yeah. from the business above or someone who worked in the business in the business Oh like physically above physically above physically above because it's on a two-story like strip mall right and they were like every morning at 8 a.m. Our office floods with the smell of grease and when we confronted them about it they said that's when we make our bacon which means they're making bacon once for the whole day. Interesting. Also it's crazy that like they complained to them about it and their response was like

This is why we do it. This is why I, like, you didn't apologize. Here's a reason. Yeah. Well, they may have apologized. I would have assumed that it was because of the bacon. Why? I know that.

I would stop doing it. But I would, well, you can't. I would have stopped them. But, like, the fact that this was, like, already four-hour old bacon. That's, what time would that be?

You said, like eight? Or eight or nine or something. Yeah, because they open a 10. Oh, yeah. So they're probably mass cook at. At least. Probably nine. Yeah.

That makes sense. That is disgusting. Imagine getting their burger at 10, p.m. Like right when they're about to close. Yeah. And the Yelp review only mentioned the one time when they're not like, and then it happens again at, nope, 45. Nope. They make like a tub of bacon. Ugh. Yeah. Ugh. Yeah. At least it's every day. At least it's every, well, we hope it's every day. But this tasted like, and like I was so bummed because I love a bacon burger. Of course. I love a single patty burger because double patty burgers tend to be a little bit too much sometimes.

Sure. I actually did feel the double patty worked well overall at five guys. There were many things about this burger that could have been like, oh, this is just a delight. But because the bacon was funky, I think because we just made a wrong choice with the A1. That's on us. Because the jalapenos had no kick and because the mushrooms were like pool noodles. Giant. They were like pool noodles.

Everyone said that. The grilled onion, the beef and the bun were kind of the only things that were like consistently pleasing me about this burger. That bun has been carrying. Those buns are good. Yeah, yeah. And they're a great texture and they absorb the juices of the beat without getting like unmanageable. Yeah. So I went low end of average. Yeah. I still didn't like hate that. I don't think this is a bad burger, but it was the worst burger of the three we had. Yeah. 4.68 for me. Oh, you did go lower. Yeah. I think 542, I believe. Yeah, 5.42. Yeah. Yeah. Talk about it. I don't. I think I felt this is crazy. I think. I was like, it's mean to go lower than that.

I don't want to hurt their feeling. But like, I think as we were saying, the bun is good and the meat is good. It's like the basics of a burger. They're doing a lot of heavy lifting. Sure. I thankfully, apparently have lost my sense of taste. So I don't really taste the A1 sauce or the bad. Can we just do the nasal swab real quick?

Can we just check? I already spit all over this mic. The damage is done. You're good. Let's switch. Yeah, right. I feel it was like fine. I just was like, I will never get that combination again.

I also gave, I give them the credit of like, we built this burger. Yeah. From the ground up. They judged us for building this burger and they showed up, I think. Yeah, we got some pushback from the employer like, oh, I wouldn't eat those. And it's like, bro, they're an option. Yeah. Then why is it there?

Stand behind it. Why is it on the menu? Yeah. Yeah. But to your point earlier, maybe you guys need to start pushing like types. subvert like start selling combinations yes yeah obviously which the competitor that five guys is against right now muya the muya gotcha they do have very customizable but then they do have the the hall of dang is what they call it and it's like these are a bunch of specialty combinations that we

recommend gotcha and they have a bunch of them yeah so it's like they're really putting out like the possibilities yeah yeah yeah that's like so obvious i feel all right well when you put your score with my score. The little hamburger with bacon gets a 5.05. Which means it does not advance. Muya had a

5.47 in round two. Another second round second round curse. But they get to see the final round now with their strongest. Okay, wait, okay. I didn't want this one to move forward. It didn't earn it. I didn't earn it. Let's be honest.

crazy. Yeah. It's like your least favorite child. Like, I don't want him to succeed. You would root against your least favorite child? You don't want them to get their own together? Well, if you gets his act together, then he's not my least favorite anymore. What if they're all great? That's not going to happen.

All right. I'm not going to be that good of a favorite. All right. Well, it's finals time and five guys ain't in it. Let's jump to that. We have our second finalist. The number three seed muya

has secured its spot in the finals against number one seed, Fat Burger. Only one fight left, our main event, so without further ado, I present to you our discussion about Muya's truly insane concoction, The Hambur Dog. Muya made it to the finals, despite taking a step back in round two with the well done. It is still here. It has a chance to win the entire tournament with its entry, the Hamber Dog. What a name.

What a name. What a concept. What an idea. Somebody was drunk when they came up with this. No sober mind thinks of, what if we quarter a hot dog and make it a topping? Yes. I mean, the only thing is missing is pizza, basically. Crazy.

Yeah. That'd be crazy. So the hamburger dog is in the finals. Please read to people what is in the hamburger dog. Because other than a quartered hot dog, it has. The certified Ingus beef. topped with an all beef hot dog, bacon, jalapeno's, fried onion strings, ketchup, and a signature potato bun.

Yeah. I didn't have any problems with any single ingredient here. And the one thing that surprised me the most was how much I thought the jalapeno tied it together. Well, okay. So reading that, I don't think I had any bacon in the bites I had, or at least I just don't remember, or the hot dog overpowered everything. I think the hot dog overpowered the bacon a little bit. Okay.

Yeah. It was a very strong taste. I took the jalapinos off, so I can't help you there. Oh, okay. I probably had a jalapeno person in general. Yeah, I just don't really do spice. But probably had some remaining jalapeno juice and zest or whatever essence. I thought that the well done onion was spicier than this one was even with full bites of jalapeno.

Oh. Yeah. Well, maybe I could have kept it on. Yeah. But it was a thing where I was like, this thing's just going to taste like hot. dog with just more stuff around it. And I think because of the jalapeno adding like a flavor that's nothing like a hot dog. Yeah. It balanced it in a way that I just didn't expect because I wouldn't put jalapenos on a hot dog in general. And the way everything mixed and also like the ketchup,

I think ketchup was the right thing for this combination of stuff. Like you could have done any sauce. I think an aoli would have felt too heavy. Yeah. I think a ranch would have been too zesty. I guess some, yeah, I guess. I'm thinking of like brots and how you have like a spicy mustard. I could see the mustard going well because of the hot dog, but maybe not because of the jalapeno. I don't know. But to me, the ketchup worked.

And this had the fried onion strings. And I felt that the fried onion strings here stood out better. That was my note. I said that the fried onions really came through on this one, like way more than the, the, well-d-d-nion, the onion burger. And I love a hot dog. And it was a really flavorful hot dog. It was a good hot dog.

Yeah. It was a good doggy. It was great. I don't like the way I phrased it. I didn't like it either. But let's see. Let me read my exact notes. Halapeno really tied this all together.

Hot dog was prominent but not overwhelming. Beef patty and bun were still the stars. So the basic burger reigns supreme. I did not have this as high as my round one burger either. Me either. But it was still a good burger. This is actually my third scoring burger, my, my worst burger. But I thought all the burgers here today were actually good.

Oh, I scored this one higher than the wild onion. Yeah. I went 7.46. Okay. I went 6.26. So when you put your score with my score, this gets a 6.86, which for a third round burger, historically speaking, I don't know if I like its chances, but it's not totally out of the running. So we'll throw it over to Muya's competition and see who's going to take home. And by take home, no one's taken home this belt.

But who will earn a side plate on the Septemberger championship for 2026? Wait, before the analysis, you got to talk your last bit of trash. Muya, I understand you've got something to say. It's me again, Muya, and I'm going to take you. you down to the slaughterhouse. This week I'm up against fat burger. More like flat burger. I'm going to squish you so flat like a cow patty in the grass. That's right. I'm taking you down. We put a hot dog on a hamburger. No one's that crazy. You better watch your back because I'm what? Coming for you and I'm what going to make you move out the way. Move out the way.

The fans love it when I say move out the way. Yeah. Fat Burger isn't going to take that lying down. Hit him back. It's me, Fat Burger, back again. And I'm calling out you, Muya, for your hamburger dog. Yeah, I fucking got it this time. It took me 12 fucking taste to get your stupid burger name right.

Oh, you're throwing hot dogs on your burger? We're throwing something better. We've got a thousand islands on there. Yeah, our thousand island burger is going to kick your ass September burger. Yeah, muya, more like boo-ya over here and boo-you-to-you. Okay, Fat Burger, talk is cheap. Let's score the Thousand Island Burger. We are in the finals. The last match of Septemberger, the championship belt could be Fat Burgers for the taking, but it is up against Muya, who I thought was one of the most impressive

burger places I went to in this tournament and especially for a place that was previously unknown to me. I really recommend Muya. And so we have the Thousand Island Burger, which felt like Fat Burger's approximation of like an in and out animal style a little bit. Yeah. Again, it replaced the sauces. Very, very messy, very messy.

This one was just like, I was looking for Gwyneth Paltrow because it was full of Goop. Nice. We also got it hot because I decided, let's order this after the fact. Let's place a separate order, try the first couple burgers, and then get this delivered. And it coming hot was so good. Very tasty. I think it improved on the basic for me.

This was in a lot of ways the basic minus the mayo and mustard plus Thousand Island. Oh, see, I disagree with improving on the basic. because I like on the original there is both relish and then pickle chips because I like I like the double pickle and I like the pickle in different things. Yeah. It's fun. It's zesty. It's zangy. It's it's fun. But then I feel like with the Thousand Island, like because of like how in comparison, more fresher and lighter the like original was, you're sort of with Thousand Island dressing. You're taking away those like the acidity of like the like the mustard and ketchup pickles and the relish to like break it up. part and you're replacing it with, and listen, I love mayonnaise. But you're like replacing all those fresh ingredients. It's just like a sloth of like a mayo based dressing.

What I'm going to say, and this is a matter of you're kind of talking about balance in the way that you might hear on the show The Bear. And I don't love acidity and like pickled stuff as much as others. So I'm okay with that kind of being a more background flavor. So I literally fully agree with you on the effect that the Thousand Island has. I just see it differently in terms of how that impacts my enjoyment. That's very fair. But I do agree that that is the effect of putting this much sauce on it. And it was too much sauce.

This burger could have been even higher if it had tamed the Thousand Island a little bit more. I think if there was less sauce, I would have less of like. A gripe? Yes. Yeah. as is, I went 8.03. This is my favorite of the three, not by a substantial margin, but I really liked it. I went 7.52 because I thought it was like a little bit better than the Western Bacon Burger, but like not a ton.

And I thought the original was better than both of those. And I think that might have just come down to, again, the sauce city of it all of both the Western and the Thousand Island being pretty wet burgers in terms of the amount of sauce on those. Yeah, yeah. Well, when you put our scores together, the Thousand Island Burger gets a 7.78, which up against Muya, the hamburger. That's right. A hot dog cut up onto a hamburger, which only got a 6.86. What? The hamper dog. Sorry. The hamburger dog was flying too close to the sun. the hamburger dog is the icarus of hamburgers that means

Fat Burger is our September 2026 winner Muya You're ready Me acting like I had anything Do with it besides just eat the burger It's like I want

You know what? Let's cut to a victory speech It's Fat Burger back again one more time And we're the ultimate champions of September Burger 2020. We absolutely destroy McDonald's. We absolutely clobbered Burger-Fi.

And we kick the absolute shit out of Muya. Oh, I can't wait to shove a big fucking Fat Burger into my gullet. We're the fucking champs. Yeah. All right. Well, that's the Septemberger Finals. Septemberger was won by Fatburger. So it joins Wendy's from last year in a

out from the year before an outbacked steakhouse from the very first Septemberger as our four Septemberger winners. And at some point, I'm going to put those four winners in an even smaller, more elite tournament against each other. I was going to do it immediately this year. But why not give myself more content for the future, you know? And give yourself some rest before eating four more workers. Give my arteries a chance to repair. But thanks to, uh, thanks to much for coming with to Fat Burger and experiencing victory.

It tastes sweet or savory in this case. That's a beef joke. Thanks so much for watching. I'll be back next week with an episode on Wienershnitzel. So thank you so much for joining. You can follow the show on Instagram and TikTok

at Fine Dining Podcast. You can join my Discord if you want to argue with me over Fat Burger winning. And I do have a Patreon where you get an exclusive episode on the last day of every month. You get full interviews with my guests about their preferred restaurant rotations. You get the full Yelp from Stranger segments. And you support the show directly. So if you did that, I very much appreciate it.

But either way, I love all of you. Thanks so much for watching. Have a fine day.