Every morning, I eat breakfast and read the paper from end-to-end.  Yes, I still subscribe to an actual physical newspaper.  You know… big sheets of paper with smudgy ink?  With the words arranged in columns?  “Bad dog”?

Apparently I don’t earn the Silicon Valley merit badge because I don’t read the news online like everyone else.  Shrug.  I just like the linear and comprehensive process of going through the entire paper.  Plus, I insist on getting the most local paper possible so I can also be up-to-date on local goings-on.  I love my paper.  I think the content is well written and the design is thoughtful.  It’s clear that the folks who work there think a lot about their readers and listen to their feedback.  I’m such a paper nerd that I actually requested a “Save the Merc” bumper sticker when they were rallying for their lives during major paper ownership changes.

Anyway, I digress.  One morning, I was munching on my cereal and flipping through the articles when my eye was caught by a simple ad in the middle of one of the pages.  It was an ad for The Counter, which is a gourmet burger joint with locations in tony Palo Alto and the upscale Santana Row shopping center in San Jose. 

Their main schtick is that you can customize your own burger.  Their “menus” are these cute little clipboards with a golf pencil and a single sheet of paper divided into categories of checkboxes (bread, meat, toppings, sauce, etc).  You just check off what you want in your burger and hand it in. 

When I first ate there, I was delighted by the menu.  Then half an hour ticked by with each of us still trying to puzzle out a good combination of toppings and cheese and sauces.  By the end, I was kind of craving a normal menu where I could just choose from a set of pre-selected configurations. 

To be fair, the construction is easier if you don’t maximize your possible choices.  I think you get something like 5 topping/cheese/sauce choices (plus you can pay extra for more).  Usually at around 3 you can make a pretty decent burger.  But you think, “But I get FIVE, so by golly I’m choosing FIVE.”  That’s where you get in trouble because then your flavors don’t often match so well.

Back to the newspaper ad.  Like the style of the restaurant, the ad was sleek and minimalist.  The focal point of the ad was a photo of one of their burgers.  Ironically there was nothing sleek or minimalist about this burger.  It was the most ridiculous burger I’ve ever seen.  I think it was meant to be some sort of eye candy.  (Don’t get me started on Carls Jr commercials.)  But my first reaction to seeing this picture was, “How in god’s name are you supposed to eat that monstrosity??”  It honestly made me NOT want to go get a burger.

I find elaborately plated dishes for the sake of fancy pants presentation really annoying.  The plate of food is majestically placed in front of you.  Oohs and ahhs ensue.  And then you hover over the dish hesitantly with your knife and fork, not quite sure how to begin.  A dish can definitely be elegantly and beautifully plated but still be accessible to eating. 

It seems that most culprits are ones of massive portion sizes (thanks America).  I wonder if it’s simply a blindness that occurs when presented with a sea of choices.  If you have all the choices in front of you, you are compelled to take a little from each one.  Like at a buffet, where you keep piling your plate with food and halfway through you realize you didn’t plan your plate space strategy so well.  Or kids at a sundae-making station creating impractical sugar mountains by adding topping after topping.  Or at The Counter where you get to choose from a glittering array of checkboxes.  Or perhaps a chef getting a little carried away with sprinkling a little of this here and piling a little of that there.

There is something to be said about the beauty of simplicity.  A dish where you can dig in without thinking twice AND is presented beautifully would be a true gastronomic masterpiece.