Every summer Big Cat picks a hill. This year the hill is 100 burgers — originally 200 until his wife shot him a look, and now somehow back to 200 because he can't help himself. It started as a wholesome grilling bit. It has since escalated into a referendum on what even counts as a burger in the year 2026.
Big Cat lays out the rules of the Summer of Burgers — grilling, occasional restaurant, no fast food.
Btw this is grilling burgers. Maybe the occasional restaurant. I’m not talking fast food. I want to grill and eat 100 burgers (and tbh the original number was 200 but my wife gave me a look that told me I needed to do 100 but I’m actually gonna go for 200)
The pace has been honestly impressive. By Memorial Day Monday he was already 6 deep, freely admitting he needs to bank numbers before KB returns from Rediscovering America and inevitably tries to torch the leaderboard. The man is treating ground beef like a fantasy draft.
Big Cat counting the MDW haul and pacing the season.
Then PMT dropped and the bit graduated into a doctrine. Burgers are a man's food. Stop apologizing for them. And — the line that sent the timeline sideways — smash burgers are fake. Not bad. Fake. As in not real burgers. A genre disqualification.
The clip where Big Cat actually says smash burgers aren't real burgers.
You can imagine how this went over with the internet, because the internet ran on smash burgers for about 4 years straight. Predictably the steak Twitter / grill hardo crowd descended, which Big Cat saw coming and preemptively quarantined inside what he keeps calling the Trust Tree. Doesn't matter. The takes are flying.
Gaz climbs onto the hill with Big Cat and goes a step further.
Gaz going scorched earth — no respect for anyone choosing a smash over a regular burger — was the ride-or-die moment Big Cat needed. He quote-tweeted a thank you and dismissed the dissenters as not serious people. Which is when JeffDLowe stepped on the rake and pointed out the elephant in the kitchen.
JeffDLowe needles Gaz about his well-known Hamburger America affection.
@stoolsalesguy Yeah but I know you like Hamburger America, right?
Hamburger America, for the uninitiated, is the George Motz smash burger temple in the West Village. It is arguably THE smash burger restaurant in America. Catching Gaz between his new anti-smash decree and his on-record love of the smash burger cathedral is the kind of gotcha that should end a movement. Gaz's escape hatch — he'll eat one if it's in front of him, but as a man he's not going out of his way — is the most Barstool sales guy answer possible. The Summer of Burgers is officially a war, and the front line is whatever you call the thing on the griddle at Hamburger America.