The Krusty Burger is supposed to suck.
That's not my opinion. That's according to Bill Oakley, who spent 10 seasons writing for The Simpsons and knows more than a little about the fictional fast-food empire of Krusty the Clown.
“The real Krusty Burger is a bad place to eat,” Oakley told me. “It's a very low bar. It's probably like a Burger King, to be honest.”
There was only one problem: we were sitting inside a real-life Moe's Tavern in Austin, about to eat a Krusty Burger that looked legitimately good.
And it was.
Austin's Real-Life Moe's Tavern
Every October, Nickel City, an “upscale” dive bar in East Austin, transforms itself into Moe's Tavern, Homer Simpson's favorite watering hole.
The tradition started in 2018 after Nickel City owner Travis Tober and his staff were inspired by a Halloween pop-up at another Austin bar. What started as a costume for the bar quickly turned into something much bigger.
The outside becomes Moe's, complete with the purple and black sign. Inside, references to The Simpsons are everywhere. The staff dresses as characters from the show. The drinks get the Springfield treatment, including, naturally, a Flamin' Moe.
And outside, Nickel City's food trailer, Delray Cafe, gets in on the act.
The trailer normally specializes in Detroit-style sliders. But during the Moe's takeover, the menu becomes an homage to The Simpsons, with dishes referencing everything from Sideshow Bob to Blinky, the three-eyed fish that once helped derail Montgomery Burns' political ambitions.
But the star is the Krusty Burger.
Which presents an interesting problem.
What exactly is a Krusty Burger supposed to taste like?
What Would a Real Krusty Burger Taste Like?
Oakley is particularly qualified to consider the question.
Beyond his years writing and producing The Simpsons, he's become something of a fast-food authority himself. His social media reviews and Steamed Hams Society have attracted a following of people as fascinated by fast food as he is.
And when I first talked to him about Krusty Burger, he reminded me that the restaurant was never supposed to be aspirational.
Krusty the Clown has simply leveraged his celebrity into a sprawling fast-food empire. The show has made jokes about the questionable meat, the restaurant's cleanliness and even the idea that somehow a single Krusty Burger patty might be less healthy than a double.
This isn't Shake Shack.
Oakley's best guess for how a real Krusty Burger might taste came from one important piece of Simpsons canon: the burgers appear to be charbroiled.
“Realistically it might taste like a Burger King regular cheeseburger,” Oakley told me when I first interviewed him. “It's grilled and Krusty Burgers are grilled—so there you go.”
In other words, imagine something vaguely Whopper-like.
Nickel City went in a very different direction.
Building a Better Krusty Burger
When Nickel City first became Moe's Tavern, the food was almost an afterthought. “We were busy off the bat,” Tober told me about that first year. The pop-up blew up online, and suddenly what had begun as a Halloween joke had become an annual Austin event. That meant the food needed to catch up.
Delray Cafe was already cooking burgers in a very small space, so whatever became the Krusty Burger needed to work within the realities of the trailer. The first version featured a five-ounce beef patty. Eventually that evolved into two 2.5-ounce patties, smashed on the griddle.
Yes, the Krusty Burger became a smash burger.
Two patties get two slices of American cheese along with shredded iceberg lettuce—or “shrettuce”—raw white onion, Best Maid pickles and a Boom Boom sauce made with Duke's mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, cayenne and crushed red chile. Tober's inspiration wasn't exactly subtle. “Ronald is a clown, Krusty is a clown,” he told me. “It just made sense to go in the McDonald's direction.”
And when you eat it, you get it. The shredded lettuce, raw onion, American cheese, pickles and creamy, tangy sauce hit a lot of the same pleasure centers as a Big Mac—without that cumbersome third slice of bread getting in the way.
But this year I wanted to find out what someone who actually helped create the world of The Simpsons thought. So I brought Bill Oakley to Moe's Tavern and put a Krusty Burger in front of him.
The Krusty Burger Test
“This looks quite good,” Oakley said when the burger arrived.
Not exactly what you'd expect from a faithful recreation of one of Springfield's least reputable restaurants. Then he took a bite.
“This is excellent,” he said.
And then came the line that pretty much ruined any chance we had of making fun of it. “This isn't gonna be a funny review because the food is too good. There's nothing to make fun of.”
That was pretty much my reaction too. This doesn't taste like a novelty burger built for a Halloween pop-up. It doesn't even really taste like fast food. Straight up, this is a restaurant burger.
And at $10, Oakley was even more emphatic. “This is infinitely better than the Krusty Burger,” he said. “This is infinitely better than almost any fast-food burger.” Then, because he is a comedy writer:
“And I'm not just saying this because you gave me a free plane ticket to Austin.”
WATCH: I Tried a Krusty Burger With Bill Oakley
Bill Oakley and I try the Krusty Burger inside Nickel City's annual Moe's Tavern transformation and find out whether Austin's version lives up to the burger he helped make famous on The Simpsons.
Commit to the Bit
The burger, though, is only part of why this works. When I first interviewed Tober, he told me that the secret to the whole Moe's Tavern experience was simple: “Commit to the bit.”
And they do.
The staff doesn't just hang some Simpsons decorations and rename a few cocktails. They become characters. Moe gets his bow tie and apron. Marge gets her towering blue hair. You walk into Nickel City and, for a little while, willingly pretend you're drinking in Springfield.
Years ago, Tober told me something else that stuck with me: “The Simpsons stuff makes the Krusty Burger taste great.”
At the time, I understood what he meant. Now I really understand it.
Because this time I wasn't taking a preview burger home. I was sitting inside Moe's Tavern, surrounded by Simpsons references, eating a Krusty Burger with a guy who actually helped create the world we were pretending to inhabit.
And that's when it occurred to me that Nickel City has committed perhaps the ultimate Krusty Burger sin.
They made the burger too good. The real Krusty Burger is supposed to be cheap, questionable fast food served by a giant corporate chain run by a morally dubious clown. Nickel City's version is a legitimately good double smash burger made by people who clearly love The Simpsons enough to obsess over the details.
So does it live up to the Krusty Burger Bill Oakley imagined? Not even close. As Oakley put it:
“This is infinitely better than the Krusty Burger.”
And that's probably the highest compliment a Krusty Burger could ever receive.
