PrintIf It's on a Pita, Is It a Burger? Kenn's Broome Street Bar in SoHo
Kenn's Broome Street Bar
363 West Broadway, New York NY 10013; map)
212-925-2086
Website
Short Order: A solid half-pound burger served on a pita rather than a bun. Underflavored meat but with a great char-grilled flavor nonetheless. Could use some more salt; order yours with bacon to make up for it
Want Fries with That? Tough luck. The burger comes with potato chips or a small salad; go for the chips
Price: $9 for American cheeseburger; $9.75 for bacon American cheeseburger
Grade: B
I believe it was two years ago that Celia Cheng of the online food magazine Cravings told me about the burger at Kenn's Broome Street Bar in SoHo. It's quite good, she said, and ... it's served on a pita.
Hold it right there, missy, I said. That's not a burger. No bun, no burger.
Well, after you've been writing about the same food item for years, your taste buds start craving something new and different. So after a lengthy time spent ignoring this burger I got the bug to check it out. Something about a pita-enveloped patty sounded downright delicious.
So I found myself at Kenn's for lunch yesterday with Matt "Hamburger Matty" Jacobs.
On the corner of West Broadway and Broome Street, Kenn's Broome Street Bar is one of those classic well-worn pubs that seems to draw folks of all stripes. We were seated next to a couple of suit-and-tie dealmaker dudes, but throughout the place were more casually dressed patrons, as well as some fashionable SoHo types.
As you walk in, dishes traveling out from a pass-through window immediately on your left help set the tone. Despite the name, this place is more "pub" than "bar," what with the relaxed atmosphere, table service, and extensive list of food specials.
The bacon American cheeseburger, $9.75. Photograph by "Hamburger" Matty Jacobs
The American cheeseburger, $9
Ms. Cheng recommended the bacon cheeseburger, so Matty and I ordered one of those, plus a standard American cheeseburger to serve as a benchmark, a baseline, a control. Burgers come, undressed, neatly tucked into the pita with a thick slice of tomato and rings of raw onion. The half-pound patties are about a half inch thick. Ours were ordered medium-rare, and they arrived more on the rare side. I'm not always a huge fan of the texture of rare burgers, but better that than overcooked.
The beef itself was not abundantly flavorful and could have used some more salt, though the flavor of the grill—that familiar flame-cooked char—is very powerful here and satisfying in its own right. I guess my previous sentence answers this question for you, but to state it clearly, the burgers here are grilled. Juiciness was adequate but not less than expected for a burger on the rare–medium-rare side. This is both a blessing and a curse, as it keeps the thin pita from soaking through but obviously does not add to the burgering experience. That said, the bottom of my pita had moistened enough by the final few bites that it began to fall apart; eat with caution and eat quickly.
The bacon burger was yards more satisfying than the plain cheeseburger. I'm not one to automatically upgrade to bacon (I think it's a flavor-enhancing cheat; a great patty should be able to stand son its own), but I'd definitely recommend it here. The crisp meat-condiment adds the saltiness that's otherwise missing from the standard package.
Matty, who works in the neighborhood, said it was the best burger going in that neck of the woods, beating even Fanelli's Cafe a few blocks over and up on Prince Street. He's right. I'd go for Kenn's before I'd hit Fanelli's.
And to answer my own question: Yes. I think this sandwich was good enough to earn the moniker burger.
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7 Comments:
Adam, I love this burger and I also had issues with the pita. But then I was reading Jeffrey Steingarten's piece in Vogue a few months back about burgers (the one that inspired my meat-grinding experiments) and he made the audacious claim that a hamburger's bun should be ignored as long as it does its one job: to soak up meat juices and do nothing to distract from the meat's beefy flavor. In other words, the bun is worthy of almost no attention. Since a pita is thin and insubstantial, yet capable of absorbing a respectable amount of juice, it fits this definition well.
Blake Royer at 1:44PM on 05/22/08
That's a good point, Blake. My burger definitions are blurring. I gotta do something to keep the burgs interesting.
Adam Kuban at 1:58PM on 05/22/08
Burger..I think the round patty, regardless of the type of ingredients in it, makes it a burger. If it's square, then it's a slider...or a square burger. Nevertheless, a shaped compacted chunk of food items between two pieces of carbohydrate like food item = Burger.
fritesandfries at 2:32PM on 05/22/08
Steingarten knows nothing of hamburgers! Kuban is right: the bun is all. The Broome St. burger, composed of the very best LaFrieda beef and piled high with bacon, is a tragedy: if not for that revolting pita, it would be one of the best burgers in town.
jozersky at 2:47PM on 05/22/08
Even in 1975 the Broome Street Bar served a better burger than Fanelli's. And it was the same burger you describe, Adam. The pita made a stamp of "different" to the burger, and the smell of the grill over in the corner added to the savor.
The side used to be a cucumber salad.
I still make my burgers exactly as Ken's for my own family at home - along with the cucumber salad on the side.
Broome Street Bar is also the first place I ever had a martini.
Don't ask. :)
foodvox at 3:47PM on 05/22/08
Heh. I thought this post would bring you out, Josh. It's funny, because I thought the patty here was a bit lacking in flavor. I wonder if they're using the same combination of cuts as other LaFrieda-fueled joints.
Adam Kuban at 3:49PM on 05/22/08
I've been eating the burgers at Kenn's since the early 1970's and they were always one of the best burgers in the city. As to ongoing discussion about burgers, the bun is only important to in a secondary sense. A good bun can't save mediocre meat, but it can enhance terrific meat. Otherwise the best burger in the city is at Wolfgang's Steakhouse at lunchtime because they use the trimmings of 28 day-aged prime beef to make the burger. Nothing matches it including Peter Lugers lunch time burger which I would put in second place. Similar to Kenn's, another very good old school NY restaurant burger which is overlooked is Noho Star.
Steve Plotnicki at 4:11PM on 05/22/08