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Food

This Mac 'n' Cheese Burger Is So Decadent that It's Actually Making the Internet Mad

Did the deep-fried mac and cheese buns go too far? Or was it the extra scoop of mac and cheese on top of the beef and bacon?
Photo via Flickr user Alan Light

"Sorry, we do not have the nutritional info for any of our menu items," Zombie Burger writes on its website. "Go ahead and live a little."

That's probably for the best, considering some of the items that are constructed in the kitchen of its Des Moines, Iowa location. There's the Undead Elvis burger, which is topped with peanut butter, fried bananas, bacon, egg and mayonnaise; and the They're Coming to Get You, Barbara burger, which uses a pair of grilled cheese sandwiches as its bun. But the burger that has grabbed the internet's full attention is called The Walking Ched, and yes, it is ridiculous.

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"I've never wanted to fuck a samdwhich [sic] till I ate the walking ched," one satisfied Zombie Burger customer said, according to a Twitter user who overheard her.

"Last time I was at Zombie Burger, I had one of my friends with me and she said the Walking Ched was like 'sex in her mouth,'" another commenter tweeted.

We can't comment on the mouth-sexiness of the Walking Ched, but we can tell you what's in it. Its beef patty is buried beneath bacon, cheddar cheese, caramelized onions, mayonnaise and macaroni and cheese—and all of that is sandwiched between two breaded, deep-fried macaroni and cheese buns. So, to reiterate, THE BUNS ARE MADE FROM DEEP FRIED MAC AND CHEESE, which makes it sound less like a standard menu item and more like something a mouthy carny would dare you to eat at the state fair of your choice.

According to the Des Moines Register, the Walking Ched is one of Zombie Burger's top three sellers. "It's sort of like a mac and cheese overload," executive chef Tom McKern told the paper. ( Sort of?) He and fellow chef George Formaro got the idea for the burger thanks to a container full of take-out mac-n-cheese which, when Formaro pulled the leftovers out of the fridge, had congealed into a solid patty. He realized he could deep fry the cheesy pasta blob and put a cheeseburger on it. Obviously.

The apocalyptic-themed restaurant is an Iowa fave, with five locations, but it went full on phenom after being featured in a Tastemade video on Facebook. The 84-second long clip shows how the burger is made (warning: a PVC pipe is involved), and people have feelings about it. There are more than 25,000 comments on the video, and most of them seem to be foreigners shrieking "This is why you're fat, America and [Insert My Country Here] would never eat this because we live on organic lamb faces and our own unfulfilled dreams."

The foreigners may be right, because this actually isn't the only American-as-all-hell restaurant that offers a deep fried mac-n-cheese-bunned burger. California's Pig Pen Delicacy advertises itself as "the Home of the Mac'Cheese Bun," Chicago's RockIt Burger Bar has its own Mac & Cheese Attack, and Datz Restaurant in Tampa sells the Cheesy Todd, which has a bacon-jalapeno mac-n-cheese bun. U-S-A! U-S-A!

Regardless, the Walking Ched seems to be the only one that dumps an extra scoop of mac-n-cheese onto the burger, between those two already quite excessive buns. But if you're going to make the trek the Iowa to try the thing, at least you knew what you were getting yourself into.