The Story of The Oinkster's 'Maron' Burger

Comedian Marc Maron is, as the kids in The Biz say, as hot as they come. His extremely popular podcast "WTF" is nearing its 400th episode and shows no signs of slowing down, his self-titled fictional-but-not-really-at-all TV show on IFC just premiered a few weeks ago to rave reviews, and his book "Attempting Normal" is climbing the New York Times bestseller charts. But all of that may simply be lead-up to his big accomplishment of the moment: Getting a burger named after him at The Oinkster.

As announced by the man himself on his medium of choice:

It certainly makes sense that the hottest comedian of the moment has one of the spicier burger options around. Also, this GIF should be pointed out, just because it's awesome:

To find out the story behind the naming of the burger, I called up Fred Guerrero, the son of Oinkster owner Andre Guerrero, and one of the partners.

Rick: So, how did the whole thing come together?

Fred: It actually came together really quickly at the last minute. We have a friend who ran into Marc Maron's friend at a party, and he was like 'it would be cool if you guys did a Maron burger.' He had a show coming out, and a book, and he's doing a lot of press. The show is all shot around our area, in Eagle Rock and Highland Park, and he's at the restaurant every now and then. We've only done a couple collaborations with the Burger of the Month, and we try to keep them kind of local, so we just figured it would be a good fit. So we just reached out to him on Twitter and sent him a message and asked him if he wanted to do a Burger of the Month with us, and he just said "sure."

Rick: And that was it?

Fred: That was it.

Rick: What kind of input did he have?

Fred: We kind of do it independently. We're usually planning them about a month or two out in advance. For May, it was for Cinco de Mayo, so we wanted to do a Mexican-themed burger to go along with it.

Rick: What ideas didn't make the cut?

Fred: We had one we were trying to do one with quesadillas. Like, instead of hamburger buns, there were quesadillas? But that didn't work. We knew we wanted to do something kind of spicy and we wanted to choose the spiciest ingredients, and nothing was tasting right, so we just kept trying different ones until it tasted right. That's what we always want to make sure, that it tastes really good. We don't want to make a Burger of the Month just to make one.

Rick: And this one's Maron-approved?

Fred: We made sure he tasted it first to see that he liked it and wanted to put his name to the burger. And it worked out really well.

The burger's available through the month of May and goes for $8.95 a pop. Oh, and here's another image of the burger, just because:

Before hanging up, Guerrero also offered a teaser preview of The Oinkster's popular annual Burger Week, which will run from June 3rd through the 9th this year:

Fred: This is our third one and it's just been snowballing every year. We never thought it would be this big. And this year, we have the craziest burgers we've ever done. People were impressed over the past two years, but these blow those out of the water.

See our coverage of last year's Burger Week: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 5, and Day 7.

Photos/GIF by Jimmaybones