Happy birthday, 8ully!
Glad your burger was good. I've never heard of fried cheese curds. We used to get fresh cheese curds when I lived in Wisconsin. They had them at the farmer's market. When they're fresh, they squeak when you chew them. They're really delicious. It's always nicer to be able to wear casual clothes and not have to worry about being in a place where you have to worry about making a mess when you eat. A relaxed meal is better than a stressful one and I think a trip to the French Laundry or similar would be kind of intense and probably not in a good way by comparison.
In the midwest they like to deep fry stuff. Not quite to the level of Mars bars, but they will bread and deep fry mushrooms. I'm not a fan of that. A Japanese fried of mine once made me a dinner of tempura. She had the batter sitting in a bowl of ice and an electric fryer with hot oil to dip the ingredients into. It was lovely, but it's rare that you find it so well prepared. She was from Yokohama. She'd have us make sushi and then we'd eat it. A group of us. But we always had to photograph it first. I have a bunch of polaroids of sushi dinners we made. She'd fan the rice to cool it before we used it. She had a Tower Records Tokyo fan. Tower Records is long gone but I still have those polaroids. She was a treasure. I lost track of her after she returned to Japan.
