NYT article on hamburgers.
January 15, 2003
The Burger Takes Center Stage
By ED LEVINE
I HAVE eaten hamburgers every day for the last two months.
I have traveled the five boroughs of New York City to do
so. And in the city's lowliest corner diners and loftiest
expense account restaurants, I have found satisfaction. New
York, my research has documented again and again, is a
hamburger heaven.
All are represented here: the bar burgers, diner burgers,
white-tablecloth loaves and fast-food pucks, flame-broiled,
pan-seared and roasted. All in some way are deserving of
praise. For every New Yorker, my relentless eating
suggested, there is a hamburger.
With the opening a few months ago of Blue 9 Burger in the
East Village, this discovery reached a kind of apotheosis.
Truly every burger style is now represented in New York, as
Blue 9 serves what might be the city's first
California-style hamburger. It is reminiscent of the
ethereal hamburgers served by the West Coast's In-N-Out
Burger chain: a thinnish patty of meat on a toasted bun
with lettuce, tomato and Thousand Island dressing.
The restaurant already faces competition, however. Tucked
away in a corner of the Parker Meridien Hotel's grand lobby
is the newly opened Burger Joint, which dispenses a
thicker, though smaller in diameter, four-ounce burger on a
paper plate.
Burgers go way back in New York. Introduced to the city by
German immigrants as steak served in the Hamburg style,
they were on the menu at Delmonico's as early as 1833. At
10 cents a plate, or a shade more than $2 in 2002 dollars,
a burger was about the best deal in the restaurant.
This long history explains a bit of why many upscale
restaurants still serve burgers, at least at lunch. A
tremulous economy is part of it, too. Danny Meyer, an owner
of the Union Square Cafe, said he currently serves more
than 40 burgers a day.
"Especially in these uncertain times," Mr. Meyer said, "a
juicy, two-fisted hamburger provides comfort and
certainty."
The burger at Union Square Cafe costs $12.50 and comes with
French fries; it isn't even close to the city's most
expensive. For many years that title was held by the "21"
Club, with its $26 burger made with houseground top round
and sirloin, which Eric Blauberg, the chef, has recently
rejiggered to include duck fat and fresh thyme and
marjoram.
It's a flavorful burger. But really, what kind of a burger
joint requires a gentleman to wear a jacket and suggests a
tie?
Then Daniel Boulud stepped forward with a $29 hamburger at
his DB Bistro Moderne on West 44th Street, although some
burger purists insist that with its interior stuffing of
black truffles, foie gras and braised short ribs it is a
hamburger in name only.
"It's delicious,'` said Alan Richman, the food columnist of
GQ, "but it certainly doesn't resemble any of the lousy
burgers I grew up with in the Philadelphia suburbs."
That's not surprising. It is hard to imagine a burger in
Mr. Richman's neighborhood served, as Mr. Boulud's is, on a
housemade bun with toasted Parmigiano Reggiano, tomato
confit, chicory and fresh horseradish and a side order of
habit-forming fries.
More recognizable to Mr. Richman, perhaps, but even more
expensive, is the new reigning champion of hamburger
pricing: a $41 monster that has just appeared on the menu
at the Old Homestead on Ninth Avenue, built of beer-fed
Kobe beef, with lobster mushrooms and microgreens, on a
Parmesan twist roll. It is genuinely lousy, a mushy, gray
thing of loose consistency and little flavor.
The Old Homestead and DB burgers are just two of the
extreme burger variations available in New York. Indeed, in
New York, if you can grind it and cook it, someone will
call it a hamburger.
La Sandwicherie, carved out of the back of the kitchen of
the Moroccan restaurant Zitoune, on Gansevoort Street,
serves Moroccan-inspired burgers, made with spicy lamb
sausage and salmon. At Dim Sum Go Go in Chatham Square in
Chinatown, Charn-Hing Man, the chef, makes a burger with a
patty of dumpling filling served on a steamed bun. And at
Marseille in Midtown, Alex Ureña makes a Provençal-inspired
seafood burger with salmon, shrimp and scallops topped with
a harissa mayonnaise and served on a brioche bun.
Mr. Ureña's fish burger is particularly fine. But more in
tune with the common New York burger experience is the
superlative beef patty available on East 51st Street, at
Prime Burger, né Hamburg Heaven.
Founded in 1938, Hamburg Heaven gently played off its
location across the street from St. Patrick's Cathedral
with a slogan printed on its menus and doors: "The Gates of
Heaven - Never Closed." Rita Hayworth and Henry Fonda were
regulars, fans of the restaurant's prime beef burgers,
homemade pies and cakes and perhaps also of its one-person
booths with swivel trays that looked like school desks.
Hamburg Heaven fell victim to overly ambitious expansion
plans, but New Yorkers can still eat those same burgers and
pies in those selfsame booths for one at Prime Burger,
which took over the location in 1965. The single-occupancy
booths are a particularly lovely anachronism: take your
coat off before you sit down, as the space is so confining
you'll find yourself twisting like a contortionist to do so
after the fact.
Neighborhood taverns and bars have also long been havens
for superlative New York hamburgers. The Old Town Bar on
East 18th Street has served outstanding burgers since 1980
(the bar itself has been open since 1892). P. J. Clarke's
saloon on Third Avenue is currently closed for renovation,
but it served its signature small bacon cheeseburgers for
53 years before it was shuttered. Philip A. Scotti, the
current owner, promises that the burgers will return. And
Upper East Side residents have been eating the burgers at
J. G. Melon's for 30 years.
Burgers can also be found at virtually every coffee shop
and diner in the five boroughs. I have had dozens of
cheeseburgers at the Cosmic Coffee Shop right off Columbus
Circle, and though the Cosmic burger can hardly qualify as
great, it is certainly satisfying and graciously served by
the warmhearted people who work there. It is a perfectly
good burger, and in New York that counts a lot.
The Burger Joint on Broadway and 77th Street serves a
similar function (as well as a fine burger) for the Upper
West Side, though service there can be a bit more harried.
And Downtown artists and families get their good-enough
burger fix at Joe Jr.'s on the Avenue of the Americas and
11th Street.
Just what goes into a great hamburger? Here are some ground
rules. Burger greatness begins with fresh ground meat ,
preferably chuck from prime beef, which has more marbling
and therefore more fat. The meat should not be too lean -
that results in a mealy, overly dry burger.
THE newly opened Lunchbox Food Company in the West Village
makes its excellent burger by grinding hanger steak. Bill
Telepan, chef at the Judson Grill, grinds Niman Ranch chuck
steak, which he said has a meat-to-fat ratio of 75 to 25.
It provides a wonderfully smooth texture and taste to the
interior of his hamburgers. And at Peter Luger in
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the burgers (only at lunch) are
made of fabulously beefy dry-aged prime beef.
Good meat is only the beginning of a great burger, however.
How a burger is cooked also plays a role. Exemplary burgers
can be cooked by charcoal, as at Judson Grill, on a griddle
as at Blue 9, or in a salamander in the manner of Prime
Burger and Peter Luger. The key element is that the cook
makes sure there is enough heat to properly sear the ground
meat into a tight patty.
And how much meat? As with bagels before them, many New
York burgers have fallen prey to a sort of elephantiasis
that has left many bagels, at least, looking like spare
tires. This obsession with size can be traced to the
opening of the first Jackson Hole restaurant in 1973, which
served 10-ounce burgers then as now. But bigger is not
necessarily better. Unless the ground beef used in the
burger is of sufficiently high quality, a diner can end up
eating a pile of mushy, tasteless meat. It is also worth
noting that bigger burgers also invariably overwhelm their
buns, resulting in a dripping mess. (Some burger lovers,
particularly those who patronize Corner Bistro in the West
Village, consider the mess a virtue.)
Smaller, thinner burgers are more likely to achieve the
right ratios of bun to meat to condiment to toppings, which
can result in the winsome confluence of flavors and texture
that defines the perfect burger.
Still, half-pound burgers have become the norm in New York.
For some, there is the impression that more meat represents
better value, particularly for a burger in an upscale
environment. Mr. Telepan, the chef at the Judson Grill,
said he had tried to make his burger smaller to improve the
meat-to-bun ratio and to make it easier to eat, but his
customers rebelled.
"I started getting complaints that the burger was too
small," he said. "So I caved. I myself like a smaller
burger."
The half-pound burger has given way to what the owner of
Burger Joint, Nick Imiriziades, has dubbed the sumo burger,
which weighs in at more than a pound. The sumo has done
well. Until recently, Mr. Imiriziades said, his hamburgers
came in three sizes: the regular 5-ounce burger, an 8-ounce
Big Nick and the sumo. "But no one orders regular anymore,"
Mr. Imiriziades said. The smallest burger has been
relegated to the children's menu.
Then there's the matter of the bun. Purists want their buns
lightly toasted or grilled. They are correct. A hamburger
bun should be soft enough so that it can embrace the burger
and the cheese that comes with it. Store-bought buns work
very well, as do those made with brioche dough at
fancy-pants burger places like Union Square Cafe and the
Judson Grill. The newly opened Burger Joint in the Parker
Meridien Hotel has an old-fashioned toaster where the buns
revolve around the heating element. As each burger is
ordered, one of the young women at the shop puts a bun in
the toaster; it's ready the same time the burger is.
Toppings are a matter of personal taste, of course, but the
classic New York burger is encased in American or cheddar
cheese, with lettuce and tomato and a few slices of onion
on the side (burgers that aspire to greatness, I say,
should come with sautéed or grilled onions). Fries, of
course, should be on the plate as well - fresh, not frozen,
golden brown outside, soft inside, served with plenty of
salt.
And to drink? Mr. Richman of GQ requires "bubbles - it
could be beer or soda or even Champagne."
I like a shake, or even better, a chocolate malt. That way
you get your beverage and your dessert simultaneously.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company. |
