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Food

My Heart Aches for This Sad-Looking Airport Burger

Move over, Fyre Festival cheese sandwich.
My Heart Aches for This Sad-Looking Airport Burger
Photo via Twitter user EwenDCameron

Please behold what may be the most depressing photo I've ever seen. There it is, a disc of brick-like meat sandwiched between two beige saucers; a little slab of sadness, just barely cushioned by desiccated bread, sitting on a bare plate next to a popsicle stick sullied with burger grease.

There's no way around it. This burger is objectively hideous.

I know, I know—we should all know better than to conflate a food’s appearance with its taste, especially in "the age of Instagram" or whatever. Unfortunately, er, the burger's actual taste was apparently pretty unpleasant, too.

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Scottish television personality Ewen Cameron posted this photo to Twitter on Sunday from Glasgow Airport. According to the BBC, he’d been on his way to Paris when he stepped into the James Martin Kitchen, a restaurant owned by British chef—you guessed it—James Martin.

Ewen noticed a £9.50 burger on the menu, with no sides to justify that price. But he decided to order it anyway, according to the BBC, instructing the waitstaff to keep the lettuce off the burger. That exclusion may explain, in part, why it looks so utterly morbid. But Cameron was reportedly "gobsmacked" by the burger's "poor quality."

The tweet went mildly viral, the operative word being mildly; a follow-up tweet from Cameron tagging Martin directly compelled the chef to respond. He apologized and invited Cameron to message him directly.

That's apparently exactly what went down, as Martin told the BBC that the two did, indeed, hash it out in the DMs. Heartwarming!

Neither Cameron nor Martin has responded to immediate request for further comment as of Wednesday, especially regarding whether this is some sick April Fool’s joke.

“The images shared certainly don’t reflect the high standards we expect to deliver and it was reassuring to see Mr Martin respond personally to the feedback received," a Glasgow Airport spokesperson wrote MUNCHIES on Thursday. “Our retail team is working closely with staff from James Martin Kitchen to ensure our passengers continue to enjoy the quality products and customer experience they rightly deserve." Cool. Before you say, hey, wait a second, there's not much of a story here, why’d I waste time reading about this ugly burger, who gives a shit about subpar airport food, how could you possibly devote this much real estate to something so pointless, I ask you to consider: Have you ever seen a burger this sad?