Not eating for an entire day isn’t as difficult as birthing a child or writing a novel, but like both of those things, it takes a little preparation. So when HungryMan and I started planning for this weekend’s one-day fast, we gave serious thought to minimizing the anticipated hunger pangs. Our plan wasn’t a radical one: we would locate the most filling food we could find and eat a very large quantity of it so that we would be sated at least for the few evening hours before bed. But what to eat?

For pure belly bloating efficiency, Polish food, with its focus on dense dumplings, butter, and heavy cuts of boiled meats generally fits the bill nicely, but our favorite Polish café, Lomzynianka, was a long subway ride away from where we would be at the start of the fast. As we pondered our Hell’s Kitchen options, we came up with a few candidates, but none stood out in day-glo orange clarity like Lucky’s Famous Burgers, a newish hamburger joint on 52nd Street and 9th Avenue.

Both of us have eaten at Lucky’s before, once immediately after the shop opened up at the beginning of the year, and then once more during one of the hottest days of the summer, when we undertook a desperate search for a chocolate shake. Both times, we’ve been confused: some menu items were fantastic– the aforementioned shake (which remains as luscious and thick as ever), for example– but others were dull or overseasoned. So we chose this occasion to re-taste Lucky’s more popular offerings, hoping that we’d set ourselves up for several hours of satiety in the bargain.

HungryMan ordered the plain Lucky Burger ($5), a thick patty of grilled ground beef on a very slightly sweet-tasting bun. The meat itself was juicy without being soggy, but every other bite, HungryMan would mutter, “Hmm…” to himself as he chewed. The bemusement, it turned out, came from the flavor of smoke in the burger. At first, we thought it came from the creamy Lucky Sauce, which had a distinct odor and flavor of liquid smoke, but upon further investigation, we found the same smoky taste in the patty itself. On its own, this one strong unexpected flavor probably would have been easy to ignore, but there were nearly a dozen other taste-components in the patty, all competing for attention–only one of which was the meat itself. After a bite or two, we found this overseasoning to be a distraction, not an enhancement.

The onion rings ($7 for a double order) were also disappointing. Lucky’s serves only big, chunky slices of onion– a point in their favor– but the rings we ate on this visit contained the blandest pieces of onion we’ve eaten in years, and worst of all, they were overbattered, ending up more like hush puppies than onion rings. Perhaps this was an aberration, as we have eaten Lucky’s rings twice before, and they have been far, far better on previous visits. But regardless of history, the onion rings we were served on this visit were shamefully bad.

I fared better with the Lucky Fries ($3) that came with my sandwich. These crinkle-cut potatoes were fried quickly and drained well, salted lightly, and served steaming hot. The portion size was quite large as well–unless you’re feeding more than three people, you won’t need the Double Fries ($5).

My Veggie Cheddar Burger ($6) was less impressive, with its grainy and gummy patty that was both too dry around the edges and too wet in the center, and a scabrous slice of salty cheddar cheese that simply refused to melt completely. Strangely, the veggie patty suffered from an equal but opposite seasoning problem as the Lucky Burger’s patty– the non-meat version tasted lifeless and flat. Even an extra dose of whatever extra spicing goes into the Lucky Burger would have been a welcome addition here.

Despite the fact that this was, by a very long shot, our least satisfying experience at Lucky’s Famous Burgers, we ate nearly everything on our plates– except for the onion rings, that is. After all, this meal was as much about pragmatic stomach-stuffing as it was savoring the food we ate. But in the final analysis, perhaps the most revealing fact about our meal at Lucky’s is that now, with 20 hours of fasting under my belt as I write this, those photographs of the food aren’t making me hungry at all.

Lucky’s Famous Burgers, 370 West 52nd Street, 212-247-6717