What is the best Whataburger you've ever had? That's a question my friend likes to ask everyone. It may seem like a strange question, but in Texas, it isn't necessarily strange.
When he first asked me, I told him I couldn't tell him about the best Whataburger I'd ever had until I told him about the time I craved one the most.
Many years ago, I took a job in Africa for a year. I simply couldn't find much food there that I liked. In six months, I lost about 9 kg. I was so thin that the local guys from CARE joked that they might have to send me a care package.
It was during this period of mild starvation that a friend from Texas sent me a photo of a Whataburger. Hot cheese, mustard, and onions spilled enticingly over the sides. It was a promotional food photo.
I think that was the cruelest thing my former friend could have done to me. There I was in Africa without a Whataburger, staring at that picture for literally several days. It made me dream about Whataburger for months.
After a year in the African wilderness, I flew back to DFW. Even though it was midnight, I caught a taxi and said, “Take me to the nearest Whataburger.”
I ordered a double-meat, double-cheese burger with extra tomatoes and sliced jalapeños. I upgraded the fries and Coke to Whataburger size and washed it all down with a chocolate shake and an apple pie.
That was the best Whataburger—in fact, the best meal—I had ever had.
I'm not the only one with priorities like that. Soldiers on leave from posts around the world often head straight to Whataburger when they return home to Texas. I'm telling you, if the Pentagon could make MRE (Meal, Ready-to-Eat, or MRE) Whataburgers, it would boost morale.
Some people who live in states without Whataburger will drive for several days just to have one. They don't even get a hotel room. They simply eat one, take another to go, and drive back home. So you see, there are only two kinds of states in America—those that have Whataburger and those that wish they did.
In states with Whataburger, there are connoisseurs who choose a particular location that makes the very best Whataburger of all. They'll happily drive 100 km on this holy pilgrimage to get what they consider the Whataburger of all Whataburgers.
Whataburger is a Texas chain that began on Ayers Street in Corpus Christi in 1950. It was the brainchild of a burger visionary named Harmon Dobson. Dobson's goal was simple: In an era of small burgers, he wanted to make one so big that it had to be held with both hands, and so good that after one bite, people would say, “What a burger!”
And so it was. Whenever Mom took us to Whataburger when we were little boys, she would first spread newspapers across our laps in the back of our enormous old sedan. Then she would cut the burgers in half and hand them to us in a way that kept us from dirtying her protective plastic seat covers.
Three things I loved about the early Whataburgers: 1. The triangular buildings that looked like the orange order cards everyone now takes as souvenirs. 2. The smell of beef patties and onions that filled the air for half a block. 3. Mom saying, “If you finish all of that, you can have a shake.”
I like that Whataburger is so well known that Google doesn't flag it as a spelling mistake.
Today, there are more than 800 Whataburger locations across the orange states of Whataburger Nation, from Arizona to Florida. Texas, of course, remains the capital. And all these Whataburgers are open 24 hours a day—proving every day that everything is bigger and better in Texas.
