I had a few ideas of what I wanted to see in and around Dallas, Texas with our kids when we arrived there for a short trip a few weeks ago. We would go to the Art Museum (it’s FREE!), the Dallas Zoo, the Perot Museum, the Arboretum and we would spend a day at Fort Worth (because someone told me about the cows). We had a few coffee shops and restaurants that we wanted to see too. But as soon as we landed and started driving away from the airport, I noticed that there were definitely a lot of Whataburgers and I knew we had to try this place if it was EVERYWHERE.
Being mostly vegetarian, we know places like this usually have a secret menu. Like at In-N-Out burger, we always get grilled cheese animal style and it’s perfect. So the hubby found this vegetarian Whatahash burger on another site called “Hack the Menu” and we headed into the restaurant thinking that we were ordering something ‘local’.
Can I have a Whatahash burger?
“A what a what?”
A Whatahash? Like this one. And I showed the girl at the register the picture the hubby had found.
“UM. Let me show this around” and with that our phone was passed around the kitchen for a few moments and there was a bit of bewilderment, laughing and head-scratching. It turns out this was not a well-known item at the Whatburger we had picked. We were already figuring out what else we were going to order instead when she came back with a big smile and our phone and said:
“We never made this before, but we’ll make it for you.”
And if this was a musical and not real-life, this was the moment the whole kitchen would have chimed in with a song and dance. Instead they all stood there and beamed at us with ear-to-ear smiles.
So we grabbed some sweet tea and sat down and someone came by with a tray of different kinds of ketchups and let us choose between fancy and spicy. (Oh I wish every place had a neat little tray of ketchups.
And then our Whatahash burger arrived. I think everyone in the restaurant watched while we opened it and took our glorious first bites.
Perfect. (and totally deadly. I wouldn’t recommend making this burger a habit….)
But that’s when I fell in love with Texas. They are definitely friendly and adorable here in Dallas and I can’t wait to tell you more about the trip!
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)
Never made it before? Yikes, that was brave to eat it!