April 2008
Posted by Adam Kuban, April 30, 2008 at 12:45 PM
Yo, burger cheapskates: If you can make sense of this jumble of numbers, you can scarf some cheap White Castle burgers on May 27. For National Hamburger Month (May) this year, the Castle is tooting its 87th anniversary by offering sliders for 27¢. But only for 87 minutes.
Date: May 27
Time: 2 p.m.
Where: Selected Whiteys in all White Castle markets
Limit: 10 (as if you'd want to do more than that)
Find a Castle near you: whitecastle.com/_pages/Locate.asp [Tip o' the hat to Eater]
Posted by Adam Kuban, April 27, 2008 at 12:30 PM
Says Nick from Beef Aficionado, who snapped the photo above: "Looks like a new burger spot called Black Iron Burger Shop will be opening in June on 5th Street between avenues A and B. Very classic looking."
I'm just guessing here, but I'm going to guess that the burgers here will be grilled. How can you name a place that and not grill them?
Posted by Adam Kuban, April 24, 2008 at 3:20 PM
I've been checking out the blog FastFoodCritic.com lately. It's a relatively new site that "provides news, reviews, prices, diet and nutritional information, food facts, plus original feature stories about fast food, the restaurants, and the quick serve industry." It's a handsomely designed site that turns a crazy obsessive lens on food that many of us often eat but don't often think about. The post on Sonic's tater tots hit a sweet spot for me, championing, as it does, the underdog tater product of the fast-food world. Welcome to the blogosphere, guys!
Posted by Adam Kuban, April 21, 2008 at 3:45 PM
"People think Americans are obese and burgers are bad for them—they are delicious.
"In-N-Out burgers were extraordinary. I was so bad, I sat in the restaurant, had my double cheeseburger then minutes later I drove back round and got the same thing again to take away."
Quoth the Ramsay. [via The Eater]
Posted by Adam Kuban, April 18, 2008 at 9:30 AM
Mr. Cutlets discloses his top ten burgers in New York City to the New York Daily News, and his No. 1 pick isn't even in the city. It's Hildebrandt's in Williston Park, out on Long Island. The rest of his list, however (with the exception of White Manna in Hackensack, New Jersey), is within easy ranging for straphangers. AHT asked Mr. Cutlets about his top ten oh so long ago, and it's interesting to note how his list has changed in that time. (As it should; no top burger list should be static.) The head-to-head, after the jump.
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Posted by Ed Levine, April 17, 2008 at 11:30 AM
I've been in the Dallas–Fort Worth area the last few days to attend the Pillsbury Bake-Off. The contest itself ended by lunchtime Monday, so I arranged to meet Bill Addison, the talented food writer and restaurant critic at the Dallas Morning News, for another foray into Fort Worth. I had no idea until I got down there that Fort Worth had so much more interesting real food than Dallas. Addison wouldn't come right out and say it, but I think even he would agree with that sentiment.
Anyway, I tried to visit Kincaid's on Sunday evening but arrived too late. So Bill and I made it our first stop on Monday. Kincaid's is about as celebrated a burger place as there is in America. It's lauded in George Motz's terrific new book, and you can find it on many best or top ten burger lists—lists that cover not just Texas but the whole country.
That's why I was so shocked about what we found.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, April 14, 2008 at 11:00 AM
Editor's note: Ladies and gentlemen, it's been a while since we grilled someone, and we couldn't get back in the groove with a better subject. You know that burger history book by Josh Ozersky that comes out this month? Andrea Murphy here worked as Ozersky's research assistant on it. We figured we'd get all kinds of dirt on "Mr. Cutlets" from her. So, without further ado, let's get Grillin'!
How to shape an imaginary burger patty, Andrea?
Name: Andrea Murphy
Location: New York City
Occupation: Researcher
You served as Josh "Mr. Cutlets" Ozersky's research assistant for his book "Hamburger: A History." What exactly did that entail? I spent a lot of time at the New York Public Library (and other libraries) looking through newspapers, books, academic papers, obscure food industry journals, and other sources. What would usually happen is that Josh would give me a topic and I would go find information. Sometimes he was very specific (a list of movies either from the 1950s or that took place in the 1950s where people eat hamburgers) and other times more general. There was a lot of photocopying.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, April 11, 2008 at 11:22 AM
I'm not going to spend a lot of time dwelling on Action Burger. If you remember the Lucky Burger [AHT review] that opened and then closed on Avenue A in the East Village, the former owner there is affiliated with Action Burger. And, judging by taste and texture, the same burger from Avenue A has popped up across the river here in Williamsburg (on Grand between Union and Lorimer). I'm guessing the patties are "cold smoked" and marinated overnight the same way they were at Lucky. The result is an odd smokey flavor and a tough patty.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, April 10, 2008 at 3:45 PM
Here's a new one on the fusion-burger front: A bulgoki burger. Robb Walsh, food writer for the Houston Press, found this thing at the a Korean-owned restaurant called Burger House on the Gulf Freeway.
The bulgoki burger cost me $4.53. “Don’t put mustard on it, that doesn’t taste right,” the cashier advised. I put a little lettuce and tomato on the bun, and a whole lot of raw onion rings in the middle. The meat tasted like the sliced rib eye used in Philly cheese steaks and the barbecue sauce was a little sweet. I’m not sure this really qualifies as a burger because of the use of sliced steak instead of ground meat. But flavor-wise, it’s right up there with the Pakistani bun kebab.
Is this pushing the line? From the picture, it appears there might not even be a bun top. Hmm ... >:|
BURGER HOUSE
Address: 9247 Gulf Freeway, Houston TX 77017 (map)
Phone: 713-910-1567
Posted by Adam Kuban, April 10, 2008 at 10:15 AM
Coming to the IFC Center in Manhattan: The Burger and the King: The Life and Cuisine of Elvis Presley. April 29. IFC: "Director James Marsh brings us his 1996 film exploring America from Graceland to Las Vegas through the unique perspective of Elvis' eating habits." Features a Q&A with Marsh. More info: ifccenter.com
And if you don't live in New York, you can just watch the whole damn spectacle on YouTube: Parts 1 (above), 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. [via Grub Streets]
Posted by Adam Kuban, April 7, 2008 at 5:45 PM
The now-celebrated burger at this Lower East Side joint was on the chopping block, with chef Josh Shuffman wanting to kill it and co-owner Adam Cohn rejiggering it. Says Cohn: "Not only were customers few but back then our burger was even more idiosyncratic: topped exclusively with a whole roasted poblano pepper, Monterrey jack cheese and aioli. It was for the few, not the many. Shuffman had it in for the burger and I had to fight a valiant rear-guard action in its defense."
Posted by Adam Kuban, April 6, 2008 at 11:00 AM
A team of Purdue engineers has won the 2008 Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. The theme of this year's annual competition: to create the most complicated device to assemble a burger. Here's some vid:
Link: Burger-making skills put to test at Rube Goldberg contest [YouTube; via Graham Holliday]
I keep discovering great new sources of burger info to pass along to you.
First up, the Hoosier Burger Boy. You'd think the dude would hail from Indiana, but instead he's blogging about burgers in the San Francisco Bay Area. He's got about 30 places on there so far and one that I've become obsessed with trying next time I visit SF—Joe's Cable Car.
Next up, and heading back east, is NYC Food Guy. He's not necessarily all-burgers-all-the-time, but he does have a good repository of burger info on his site, which he is not shy about letting us know about in the comments of almost every recent NYC-based burger post. NYC Burger Dude, we get it. You did a burger tour. ;)
Posted by Lauren Krueger, April 2, 2008 at 12:45 PM
CITY BURGER
Address: 1410 Broadway, New York NY 10018 (at 39th Street; map)
Phone: 212-997-7770
Website: Listed as cityburgerny.com but not operational at this time
The Skinny: A very decent burger for the neighborhood. It's still early, and they're working out the kinks. The staff is learning on the job. Irate, impatient customers in a small space is no fun.
Want Fries with That? Steak fries are $2.75 or $3.95 with cheese. The beer battered onion rings looked great.
The Fashion District is a great place to be if you're a clothes buyer and one of the last places you want to be if you're looking for a good meal. Within a four block radius of where I work there are five Starbucks, five Pax, two Hale & Hearty Soups, several McDonald's, and countless steam-table, pay-by-the pound delis. That's a lot of repetition and a lack of good choices. City Burger opened Monday, and I've been there twice already.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, April 1, 2008 at 2:30 PM
The weekly listings magazine examines the East Village spin-off of the Financial District's go-to burger spot:
The rest of the sleek chocolate-toned interior—wine bottles arranged neatly on horizontal racks, intricate floor tiling—is almost too pretty for what the restaurant hawks: big, succulent burgers served in quarter- or half-pound patties (choose from sirloin, kobe, veggie or turkey), tucked into chewy Portuguese muffins. We preferred the lean sirloin to the vaguely metallic-tasting Nebraska-raised “kobe,” and the suggested temperature (burgers emerge medium unless otherwise requested) was well suited to the juicy, grass-fed meat.
ZAITZEFF
Address: 18 Avenue B, New York NY 10009 (b/n 2nd and 3rd; map)
Phone: 212-477-7137
Posted by Lauren Krueger, April 1, 2008 at 1:00 PM
Enticed by the Smörgås Burger, optionally topped with Jarlsberg or Ski Queen goat cheese, we chose Smörgås Chef over a handful of restaurants we'd never visited. I should have walked out the door the second I realized the burger on the menu wasn't the one I had my heart set on, but at that point we had our drinks, and it would have meant being late to the awful play we had tickets to that night.
No, the burger on the menu was simply a burger, and no Ski Queen cheese was offered. It hardly mattered to me, as I happily asked for Jarlsburg. We also ordered Swedish meatballs and a herring plate, but that's only worth mentioning because later Mike asked if we were eating Polish food. He knows I love him because I thought really hard about whether or not to share that with the world. And you know I love you because I decided to share it.
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