The donut burger is the centerpiece of a photo on Jenny Marinello’s Facebook page on 8/5, from the Ohio State Fair (the booth in the photo also touts Philly fries and butt fries, which will require some explication for many readers). The sign on the booth reassures us that these are real, fresh donuts, and we are in fact looking at shamelessly sweet and sticky glazed donuts here, not some earnest wimpy-hippie fried dough:
The DONUT BURGER, a burger with doughnuts for buns: not, it turns out, just some freakish state fair attraction, but a genuine cultural thing
Now, brief notes: on hybrid food, with and without portmanteau names (the donut burger currently lacks one); and then on six places around the SF BayArea where you can get donut burgers (the glazed donut as bun is standard). So far as I know, they aren’t available in chain burger places, and the fashion for them might pass, but then again they might be a coming thing.
Names. Start with my 4/3/19 posting “Another hybrid food, no portmanteau name”, about the bagel quiche (biche would have been a bad move, for reasons I explain in my posting); and more generally about hybrid dishes and their foodmanteau names: cronuts, cruffins, wonuts, bisnuts, tofurkey, quesaritos, tomatonaise, crossanwiches, eggocado, jalapiño, craisins, and more. Like the bagel quiche, the donut burger lacks a foodmanteau name: the dorger? the dohnger? the donger (whether /dan-gǝr/, /daŋgǝr/. or /daŋǝr/)? (I doubt that a name with dong in it would fly.)
Bay Area donut burgers. From the SF Eater site, “Six Heart-stopping Burgers with Doughnuts /Buns: Life is short, so use doughnuts for buns” by Ellen Fort on 4.17/15, one example:
[SF’s] Little Griddle’s Lucifer burger is a straightforward version of the doughnut burger, sandwiching an all-beef patty with American cheese and bacon between glazed doughnuts. Sugary, beefy and bacony, all in one.
No doubt such places can be found in other large American cities. (Of course, you could make your own; glazed donuts are ridiculously easy to come by.)
Note on the fries in the Ohio State Fair photo. Philly fries turn out to be Philly cheesesteak fries — that is, fries with Philly cheesesteak on the fries instead of in a bun. Sort of an American cousin of poutine.
Butt fries — note the monumentally crude name, no doubt a selling point in itself — are described in several sources as from the end of a potato when it’s sliced to be made into waffle fries. Some people deprecate them for their texture, others value them for it. I like super-crispy fries, so I’m not likely to venture into butt fries.