I’m standing in Five Guys, Wearing an In-n-Out Burger t-shirt

I like a good burger as much as the next guy. Actually, that’s a lie; I love hamburgers…good burgers, really good burgers, cooked medium-rare, that have a great meat-to-fat ratio so the juices and the perfectly melted cheese create a wonderful amalgam that slides off the edges of the burger, onto my fingers, but never makes it to the plate. I like nice round burgers that aren’t too hard and aren’t too soft, with a good bun, but one that doesn’t outshine the main attraction. In simpler terms, I worship at the Church of Hamburger.
I’m not the first person to write about burgers and god knows I won’t be the last; but I at least want to make a claim for some of my favorite burgers. I used to make the claim of X Burger Place has the “best burger I’ve ever had,” but I realized it’s nearly impossible. I could sit here and try to tell you that I’ve got a better palate or that I’ve tasted some of the freshest perfectly fatty beef turned into a burger and that I have had the definitive greatest burger ever. But then tomorrow I might end up in some little dive bar in Downtown Brooklyn, or Forest Hills, or Washington Heights eat there burger and have my theories blown to hell. Meat changes, recipes change, maybe you drank too much wine last night and your taste buds got fucked up, maybe the guy who was making your “awesome” burger at the Burger Joint last Thursday night isn’t there when you walk in with your best friend from college on a Sunday afternoon. And the whole walk over you’ll be telling her about how amazing the burger was; and then you’ll order and the guy’s not there and the stars won’t align and the wind will change and she won’t have the heart to tell you that it’s decent but that she could probably get one just as good at Bartley’s on Mass Ave.
If you asked me two years ago, who made the bust burgers in the City I wouldn’t have missed a beat and told you Corner Bistro had cornered the burger market (no pun intended) and that all others were imitators, impostors and ill-equipped to wrest the title of “Best Burger” from them. Now, I’m not so sure. I still think they are among some of the better burger places in the City, but I can’t call them the best (even though if you check my Yelp page you’ll see then ranked number one).
All of this started, by the way, because I got into an argument with a friend of mine about Five Guys Burgers. He claimed they were fantastic, while I said they were no better than a dressed up cafeteria burger. As far as I’m concerned, they’re not even the best fast food burger I’ve had. That honor goes to California’s In-n-Out Burger. No other fast food burger comes close to the burgers I’ve had there…not by a long shot. A quick word on Five Guys though: What is the big deal? Seriously, somebody tell me, because I just don’t see it and these fuckin’ yelpers are going gaga! I’ve tasted their burger patties and yay for me,

I can put jalapeños and relish and green peppers and barbeque sauce and grilled mushrooms on my burger, how awesome! As far as I’m concerned, a burger should be about the burger, not the toppings. Once you throw all that crap on your burger, how are you supposed to know what the meat tastes like? I don’t know how anybody with a good palate who can honestly say that Five Guys Burgers are the best in the City. Seriously? It’s a fast food burger, it’s a step up from Wendy’s for Christ’s sake. I know I’m ranting a bit here, but I’m a little upset (and my buddy Dopp agrees with me on this one) that every asshole with an opinion and an appetite can get on yelp or citysearch or where ever and pontificate about food when the large majority of them don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. I don’t know, maybe it’s the econo-sized peel-n-eat peanuts people can reach their grubby fingers in while waiting for their food that everyone likes so much.
Good burgers are about consistency. A “good burger” isn’t the one you had once that knocked your socks off and then was just okay the second time around. A “good burger” isn’t a one that you pile high with toppings. And above all, a good burger has nothing to do with your choice of curly or sweet potato fries or a gluten-free bun or the surly waiter who sassed you. A good burger is the one you can rely on, the one that no matter what day of the week or what time of day, tastes virtually the same as it did the first time you bit into it.
As a matter of fact, all this talk of burgers has gotten me thinking (read, salivating), and tonight; I’m heading in search of some ground beefy goodness.

photo credit: chowchowchow - flickr

Turn Down the Music, Keep the Lights Low…but Leave the Bottle

I can’t speak for every single cook out there, but I know I can speak for a lot of them when I say that after a busy dinner service the last place we want to end up is in bed. You can’t pull the emergency brake in your car after you’ve been doing 80 and just like a car, we need to shut down the machine slowly. We’ve been running around, on our feet all day and now that we’re finished we need a drink; but we’re not heading to a club, we want to end up somewhere dark and dank, and preferably in a state of disrepair.
I have a friend who, and god love her (and I do, she’s great…except when she’s inviting me to Chelsea), continually invites me to Pasha and Home/Guest House and Bungalow 8 and Cain and a whole slew of other West Side/Chelsea super-clubs packed with wanna-be Mafioso’s from Jersey, fake-titted 19-year olds from Long Island and enough man-tanned-tip-frosted men to make Boy George blush. Call me crazy, but when I finish a particularly busy dinner service and I’ve been on my feet for eleven hours and I stink like Kevin Smith after a spin class; the last place I want to end up is inside some airplane hangar, munching four tabs of X, trancing out in a tank top and two glow sticks, holding a $22 drink and yelling in the ear of the person next to me because the music is too loud.
Instead, I like to spend my nights at the dark end of a dark bar. Where the bartenders all know me, usually there’s no bouncer to squeeze past and no jerk-off with a clipboard and an undeserved sense of entitlement. I can walk in the door of my old haunt, take a seat and either have my usual (Maker’s Mark on the rocks) placed in front of me, or have the bartender ask me if I want something different…to which the answer is almost always, no.
Why spend money and deal with hassle, when you can end up in a place where the booze is cheap, the conversation is (when it’s not nonsensical and rambling) usually equal parts snarky and intelligent, and the doors don’t close until the bartender says so. As far as I’m concerned, that’s where the real fun is anyway. Because in an environment like that, you truly never know what’s going to happen. I know I’m walking out of Cain with at least $140 fewer dollars in my pocket than when I walked in there, I know that! But I have no idea what’s going to happen when I walk in the door to one of my favorite haunts. I have on many a night, walked into my 5th Street bar, intending on, “only staying for one or two drinks,” only to peel myself off a friends’ couch the next morning…or worse. But in the hours I should’ve been sleeping, I probably met: a movie star, an author, a bona fide drunk, a circus midget, college kids, a chef, a stripper, a line cook, a business man and a gentleman who has a “cash business.” And I probably also learned a few things I didn’t know before. Things I wouldn’t have learned standing packed like a sardine, drinking a cranberry with a splash of vodka and listening to the thumping sounds of DJ Suchandsuch.
I’m sure I sound a little like a cranky old man…“just nod your head and give him his can of Metamucil”…but a cooks work is hard work. We age ourselves enough without having to deal with the added pressures of Clipboard Nazi’s, snooty bartenders and nosy bathroom attendants. Yes, thank you for turning the water on for me and squeezing soap into my hand and handing me a towel…perhaps when I have to go again you can unbutton for me! I deal with enough crap that makes me a little nuts during my day, so I’m not putting up with much of anything when I leave the restaurant and sit at a bar.
So if you’re looking for me, or my buddy Dopp (you’ll be hearing about him, I promise), you can skip the West Side clubs and seek out some place small and dark. We’ll be the guys sitting under the flickering light bulb; hunched over a glass of bourbon and vodka, respectively; while we argue the merits of braising over baking and ranting about a “screwed up” ticket that came out of the machine seven hours ago…eager to do it all over again tomorrow.

I’m a…Culinary

So a few months back I was stopped by some of New York’s Finest on my way to work. For quite some time now, I’ve been talking to both chef and non-chef friends of mine about what one should do in just such a situation. There are something like 8 Million people in New York City and an innumerable amount of restaurants, some opening, some closing and some thumbing their noses at recessions as easily as they do at fannypack-wearing tourists. With these restaurants, obviously come an army of cooks. The men and women who keep odd hours, stand on their feet all day, pickle their livers and partake in various other “extracurricular activities.”
Many of these cooks take their knives with them, to and from work. And you’ve got to figure, that sooner or later, one of these people is going to be stopped by members of the Constabulary to perform a “random” search of a person with an oddly shaped oblong bag on their back. What do you say when you take the bag off your shoulders, lay it on the table, open it up and the cops see forty inches of sharpened steel sitting in front of them? Well, here’s one possibility…
I was heading to work one day, talking to a buddy of mine who lives in LA, and not really paying attention to much else. I made my way through the subway station doors, busted out my MetroCard and was almost about to swipe when I actually registered the authoritative voice booming out, “EXCUSE ME! EXCUSE ME!” from somewhere behind me. I turn around, still on the phone mind you, and see two Boys in Blue beckoning me over to a plastic table. I walk over to the table, probably a little too nonchalant, and ask them, “hey what’s going on?” and then into my phone, “no, not you I’m getting stopped by the cops right now…no, its cool, I can talk.” The officers proceed to tell me they have selected me for a random search and ask me to remove and open my bag for them. I say into my phone, “hang on a sec, I gotta take my knives off, the cops wanna see them.” At this point, the two of them exchange a brief quizzical look as I ask my buddy to hang on, and lay my knife bag on the table.
As I unroll my knives, with my phone still cradled between my ear and shoulder, I look to the cops and say, “look, officers, I’m a cook. These are my knives and I need them for work.” The cops look at my knives, they look at each other, they look at my knives again and sort of shrug. Then one of them says to me, “oh, okay…so you’re a…you’re a culinary.” I look at the two of them, roll my knives back up, sling them back over my shoulder and say to them, “yes, I’m a culinary.”