Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

@ratbuddy: Yeah, I guess the picture here doesn't really show the scale of the bread. It is a bit smaller than a normal piece of sandwich bread—probably about 80 percent of the size. So if you imagine how a normal piece of sandwich bread might overhang a typical patty, on the Fatty Melt, it's the opposite, and the patty overhangs the "bun." I think it's a good ratio, since anything bigger bunwise would give you way too much grilled cheese flavor. Or, I guess, you could always up the size of the patty. ;)

@ratbuddy: Fucking genius. Pictures? An account of the process/eating?

@Adam: No man, I don't think you were whiny. They should have shot you an email or something. You'd think they'd be excited to share with you the fact that they're putting a fatty melt on their menu.

@joylissa: Thanks for the sympathy, but I'm afraid I brought this on myself! ;)

@skizziks: Honestly, I don't know if I was asking for them to credit it. I think I just got bent out of shape when Ratbuddy emailed me and I wanted to vent.

I agree—it would be ridiculous for them to put an asterisk on the menu next to the name and have a footnote at the bottom relating the burger's history and progenitors. Like you said, then when does it stop? I was just being whiny about it.

I suppose when the Fatty Melt takes over the world (and ultimately becomes lowercase because it is so well known and exists as a commonplace item), AHT may go down as a footnote in history along with Mossy Creek, etc. And this very thread may then give future historians something to reference when writing a burger history ebook or cyberbrainwave or whatever they'll use 100 years from now.

I didn't take your comments as a dig on my work here and did feel a little bad about the "I don't care" cop out. But, sure, you all have helped me come down from the ledge, so I'm not as worried about this anymore.

The important thing now is to see the fatty melt spread far and wide.

@skizziks: I don't care anymore. You guys have beaten me down.

@ Adam. It was good, but it could have been much better. The burger was overcooked and it suffers from being a pre-made frozen puck. However, Rich (the chef at the Italian club I belong to) did the best he could with the ingredients at hand. The good news is, he said anytime he has fresh ground beef he will use it, or if I want to bring my own in, he'll use that.

Also, since adding it to the secret menu almost two months ago, he has made at least one a week. The name is still up in the air, but, he call's it a Big Woolly Melt. I can pretty much guarantee you that I'm never going to order it that way. Too embarrassing. ;)

One final note. After eating it, I do feel about three seconds of shame & about fifteen minutes of ogeda. But my smile lasts all day long.

So I'm still unclear: what did they steal exactly?

It's not the sandwich; that existed before in at least one place.

It's not the name; places like this used the name earlier (c'mon, you didn't expect people to believe nobody used the term "fatty melt" before) :
http://www.thehubaustin.com/hub_menu.pdf

So what is there to get angry about--that someone copied a particular juxtaposition of pre-existing name and pre-existing recipe? And Adam's also annoyed because they modified it?

All that said, I made myself a fatty melt last weekend, and it was great, and I owe it all to Adam Kuban and AHT. Thanks!

@Spyce: I think it would be a rather large coincidence, seeing as how the original Chubby Melt was rather obscure until AHT modified it, renamed it FATTY MELT, and then it blew up virally all over the web. That's why.

Why are you so certain that you these people "ganked" the name Fatty Melt? Much in the same way that a person may have to select a different login name because their original creation has already been taken, isn't it possible that the same thing occurred in this situation? Maybe they saw the chubby melt and did the same thing, modified the name.

you should add an entry for "fatty melt" in wikipedia and urban dictionary.

Adam wins!

... Okay, I'm way too late for this conversation. Regardless, I'm making a Fatty Melt this weekend for my wife and me!

Vive le Fatty Melt!

I have been thinking about this on and off for the last couple of hours.

"Another way of looking at it is that you are responsible for creating a phrase that has/will become a regular part of the American vernacular..."

I like that.

Let a million Fatty Melts blossom!

Vive le Fatty Melt!