PASADENA, Calif. — The O-M-Cheese Burger, which Applebee’s has been running for a month and which first went viral when diners began sharing videos of it, arrives at the table with a pool of cheese around it. Not on it. Around it. The cheese spreads out, past the edge of the bun, onto the plate, and, in at least one widely shared video, onto the table.

The chain describes it as a “viral O-M-Cheese twist” on its Quesadilla Burger. Newsweek reported that the original went viral earlier this year after diners shared “videos of molten cheese ‘pools’ surrounding the burger”. The new version, the O-M-Cheese-adilla Burger, is, on the menu, “part cheeseburger, part quesadilla.”

Patrons, interviewed at a location in the greater Los Angeles area, described the experience in the terms of people who have seen a small flood and are not yet sure of the word for it.

"I didn't order a lake. I ordered a burger. It came with a lake. I'm eating the lake now."

A man at the next table, who had ordered the O-M-Cheese Chicken Nachos, said he was “watching the cheese” and “waiting to see where it ends.” A woman with a toddler said the toddler “thinks it’s a pool” and “is trying to get in it.” A high school student, seated alone, said he had come specifically “to see if it’s a pool” and that it was.

A server, who has been doing this for eleven years and has described, on the record, a wide range of things, said the O-M-Cheese has “changed the order.”

“Before, I brought the food and the customer ate it,” the server said. “Now I bring the food and the customer looks at it. And then they eat it. But there’s a looking part. There’s a new part. The looking part.”

THE O-M-CHEESE: ODDS & OUTCOMES

  • What it is: a burger with a "pool" of cheese around it
  • What it is not: a puddle, on the record
  • Where the cheese ends: "the table," in at least one video
  • Patrons' reaction: a "looking part" that did not exist before
  • The toddler's assessment: "a pool"
  • Price: part of the 2-for-$25 menu, dine-in only

A food writer, who has covered the chain for two decades and has never, in that time, used the word “pool,” said the development was “a shift in how we value cheese.”

“We have spent a long time putting cheese on top of things,” the writer said. “We are now putting cheese around things. The next step is obvious. The next step is cheese under the table. That is where we are going. That is the future.”

At press time, the pool had not been measured, the table had not been cleaned, the toddler had not been dissuaded, and the looking part had not, on the record, been shortened.