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The Boring Burger at Rockwells Express in Greenwich Village Lives Up to its Name

Posted by Nick Solares, December 15, 2009 at 10:00 AM

[Photographs: Nick Solares]

It seems to me that if you are going to refer to an item on your menu as "boring," you are in danger of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. I can understand wanting to emphasize other aspects of your menu, especially if you feel you have come up with a better hamburger than just a simple beef patty and bun.

Such is the case with Rockwells Express and their Boring Burger, seemingly designed to steer customers towards the restaurant's concept for improving the venerable sandwich by mixing a selection of cheese, meat, and vegetables into the patty before cooking it. The mix-in ingredients are nothing new but just repurposed generic hamburger toppings—various preparations of onion, peppers, mushrooms, and the like.

I don't consider this type of thing a hamburger as much as a meatloaf sandwich, and I since I am writing for A Hamburger Today and not A Meatloaf Today, I kept things boring when I visited Rockwells Express.

Rockwells claims to use only USDA prime beef for both their Boring Burgers and Mix-It-In Burgers, which is a good thing. Prime beef has a much higher percentage of intramuscular fat (what steak connoisseurs refer to as "marbling") compared to lower grades. While it is true that a burger is a ground beef product and one can simply add fat to make up for a deficit in muscular fat, you might wonder were the extra fat comes from. It often comes from suet, the hard fat that surrounds the loin and kidneys. Although this may add juiciness, it is not going to add much in the way of flavor compared to using well marbled meat. I think beef of this quality should be highlighted, not masked by extraneous ingredients. By mixing in all manner of fillers, Rockwells threatens to obscure what could make their burger special.

In any case, I ordered a Boring Cheeseburger, cooked rare. The Mix-It-In Burgers are offered medium and beyond, but fortunately the Boring Burgers are not boring at all in regards to temperature choice. Despite the good news about getting the beef rare, I still had low expectations.

I was pleasantly surprised when I popped open the box that contained my hamburger. I was expecting a grilled burger on a brioche bun, the type of burger that gained some currency in the city in the late 1990s and early 2000s. These burgers were sold out of fast food-style restaurants that offered a range of comfort foods—chicken wings, burgers, fries, et al—with a "healthy" spin alongside salads and wraps. Rockwells kind of feels like one of these place, especially because of the interior design (which I would not classify as intelligent), but also because the menu contains chicken wings, burgers, fries, salads, and wraps.

The burger I received looked remarkably similar to the ones that I so love at Shake Shack and HB Burger. While the restaurant seems to push the Mix-It-In Burgers, they appear to also produce a sandwich that keeps with what is currently in vogue. Served on a simple potato roll with a slice American cheese, the patty appeared to be griddled (the counterman referred to it as "grilled," but I think he was confused, and not just about the cooking method), and the beef looked plump and moist. Indeed it was. Cooked perfectly rare with a decent char on the outside, the beef was juicy.

But the burger turned out to a Stepford burger. It looked just about perfect: the cheese was melted as if it was styled by a food stylist, the bun was plump and squishy looking, and the beef looked to have a nice crust that glistened in the light. But it was a vapid facade. The bun was stone cold and the beef, despite all the positive visual attributes, was completely unseasoned and flavorless. It was remarkably bland, and remarkably boring.

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