In 1995, a 14-year-old teen in Australia, Eduards Nits, went to McDonald’s with friends. They bought some food, including a Quarter Pounder hamburger. But one friend, seemingly full of other food, couldn’t eat the burger. He asked Nits to hold on to it until he returned. He never came back. Weeks passed. Then years. Then decades. And now Nits and his longtime friend Casey Dean are the owners of a 30-year-old burger from McDonald’s.
As explained in a recent interview with SFGate, the decades-old burger, now commonly referred to as Senior Burger, has not grown moldy or stinky in the last 30 years. The burger has instead shrunken up and turned into a hard, brick-like object. The two friends still have the original wrapper and container the burger came in, including a thin piece of brown wax paper that wrapped around the burger when they bought it back in the 1990s. This is one of the pieces of evidence they use to prove their claims that the burger is indeed from 1995. Sadly, the receipt was lost to time as the duo never planned on keeping the burger for decades.
“It no longer looks like a hamburger,” Nits told the outlet. “It’s no longer food. It just looks like artwork.” According to the duo, who consider themselves the keepers of what they claim to be the oldest McDonald’s burger on the planet, Senior Burger was never put in a fridge and instead was stored in old boxes, cupboards, and closets. It’s toured Australia, with Nits’ mother, a teacher, even taking it to school to show her class.
Sadly, because the duo lacks a receipt, the burger can’t be officially verified as 30 years old by The Guinness Book of World Records. But that doesn’t matter to the friends as they see Senior Burger as a piece of history that will be passed on to future generations. As for McDonald’s, they don’t seem to be fans of the old hamburger, likely because it makes their food look rather unnatural. 30 years and no mold, fungus, or stink? Is that even beef? McDonald’s says so and claims old burgers like this stay well preserved thanks to being kept in dry locations.
Regardless of all that, I want to take a bite of this thing. Would it kill me? Maybe. Would it taste horrible? Definitely. But damn, I’d love to be able to write a review on Kotaku about eating the world’s oldest burger.
