The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files.

Actor Chad Donella, who portrayed the monster, was chosen because he possessed a "subtle, interesting quality," according to casting director Rick Millikan.

In Costa Mesa, California, a young man named Donald Pankow approaches the drive-thru of a Lucky Boy fast food restaurant.

The sheepish fast food attendant tells the man to drive to the next window, where he is attacked and violently pulled out of his car.

Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are assigned to assist the local police in their investigation.

Mulder and Scully check all of the employees and discover that one of the clerks, Derwood Spinks (Mark Pellegrino), is missing his button.

Mulder, however, believes that the victim's brain was removed by a proboscis, and suspects another employee, Rob Roberts, of committing the murder.

Rob, who is actually a mutant human who wears a disguise to hide his true physical body, sustains himself by consuming brains.

Spinks visits Rob at his home the following day, annoyed at being fired from Lucky Boy for lying about his criminal record.

Rob later meets with Dr. Mindy Rinehart, a counselor hired by Lucky Boy to consult the employees following Pankow's killing.

"[1] When Vince Gilligan wrote "Hungry," he wanted to write a "different" episode that was told from the viewpoint of the monster and featured Mulder and Scully as the antagonists.

[2] Series creator Chris Carter applauded this idea and called the resultant episode a "really great monster show.

Gilligan quipped in an interview that the character was not actually based on the pilot apart from sharing a name, because the real Roberts "doesn't eat brains".

[4] When designing the sets for "Hungry", the production team found the Lucky Boy Burger restaurant to be relatively easy to create.

Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated the episode five stars out of five, calling the premise "Dexter a decade early.

[15] He was pleased with the episode's unique format, calling it a "good gimmick" that made an otherwise "forgettable at best" episode—had it been constructed in the typical fashion of The X-Files—into a memorable one.

"[16] Vitaris, however, did note that the episode's "saving grace" was Vince Gilligan's satiric writing tone; she called the scene featuring Roberts hallucinating that the burgers he was frying were actually brains "sick, but hilarious".

Despite noting that the episode wasn't a "horrible" entry for The X-Files, Kessenich was unhappy with the characterization of Rob Roberts as well as the fact that the killer was revealed very quickly.