This time the conversation was not about men or money or old roads.

It was about meat.

Someone asked, with the gravity usually reserved for questions of honor, where one might find the best burger in Man-Fucking-Hattan.

MFH.

The answers came quickly.

Some named quiet places with no windows.

Some named loud places where the tables shook.

Some named a counter that had no seats at all, only the standing of men who knew they would not stay long.

One man spoke of a bun that somehow remained soft even after the long journey from grill to hand.

Another spoke of a patty so precisely seared that the juices had nowhere left to flee.

I read every poast.

In my country we also argue about food, but the argument is usually soft and ends in shared silence.

Here the argument itself became the meal. Each man defended his chosen burger as though defending a family crest. They ranked. They dismissed. They returned hours later with new evidence and new claims that the previous poasts had been incomplete.

I have never eaten in Man-Fucking-Hattan.

I have never stood at those counters.

Yet I felt the weight of the question.

A burger is a simple thing.

Meat. Bread. Fire.

But when men who have spent years walking the great bort begin to argue over it, the simple thing becomes a test. Who among them has truly paid attention? Who has noticed the small differences that most would walk past without seeing?

The thread grew long.

The names of restaurants became almost sacred.

Someone finally wrote that the best burger is not the one that tastes the best, but the one a man still thinks about three days later while walking alone.

I closed the page slowly.

Somewhere in Man-Fucking-Hattan a grill is still working.

Somewhere a man is placing a patty onto heat with the same care another man once placed a blade into its sheath.

And on the great bort, the argument continues — not because the answer is missing, but because the search itself has become a form of respect.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5890175&forum_id=2.#50050110)