Nick Solares, our New York City–based burger reviewer, will be a guest on EatDrink with Lucinda Scala Quinn Thursday, July 31, from 4 to 5 p.m. ET on Martha Stewart Living Radio. Tune in to Sirius Satellite Radio channel 112 to hear him talk about all things hamburger. If you don't subscribe to Sirius, you can try a free three-day Internet trial subscription that will allow you to stream to your computer.
George Motz, author of Hamburger America will be reading from his book at The Half King tonight at 7 p.m. 505 West 23rd Street, New York NY 10011 (b/n Tenth and Eleventh; map)
Where the Magic Happens: Water Taxi Beach burgers, in situ.
Last night's Battle of the Burough Burgers. Part of the Cuisine of Queens (and Beyond) event in Astoria. Four boroughs pitting their burgers against one another. (Staten Island was snubbed, apparently.)
No surprise that the Queens-native burger from Harry's at Water Taxi Beach won. The Water Taxi Beach burger, as made by Harry Hawk, was up against Resto (Manhattan), 67 Burger (Brooklyn), Coals (The Bronx), and Brgr (also Manhattan). IMHO, Hawk's totes-awesome burger deserves the win. It's made exactly how I love my burgs: loosely-packed; on the thin, manageable side; served on a soft white bun; and with a great crunchy seared bits on the patty surface. If you've not had a Water Taxi Beach burger, you owe it to your lazy-ass self to get out there and try one. The view and the burger make the trip worth it.
Take the 7 train to Vernon-Jackson (first stop in Queens), get out and walk along ... oh, forget it. Here's a Google map.
A big thanks to all you readers who made it out to the Gothamist–AHT Beach Burger Bash on Saturday. All of us here at A Hamburger Today and Serious Eats had a sin-sear-ly great time meeting you, eating burgers, and working burger-line detail.
With some volunteer help from the sponsoring blogs, Harry Hawk and the Water Taxi Beach crew formed a burger assembly line, with the evening's burgers built upon a base consisting of a four-ouce freshly ground patty cooked expertly on an ultrahot griddle. The patties were added to the griddle with an ice cream scoop, cooking for a minute or two as medium-size meatballs before getting the smash treatment with the back of a spatula. This helped create a crisp exterior crust while still leaving the coarsely ground meat loosely packed. To this base, different items were added to form the regional American burgers enjoyed by the 140-some people in attendance. Those burgers were ...
Remember last week when we told you about our upcoming Gothamist-AHT Beach Burger Bash at Water Taxi Beach in Long Island City? And how we let you vote on the burgers that we'd serve?
Well, the results are in, and here are the burgers that will be available ...
It's fun. It's messy. It's a contest like no other, it's the "ketchup bowl." Your mission is to pluck as many hamburgers from a baby pool filled with ketchup in 3 minutes.
After the success of our Gothamist-A Hamburger Today QBQ BBQ last year (that's Quality Before Quantity), we've decided to team up with Gothamist again this year for another burger bash at Water Taxi Beach in Long Island City. At last year's event, chef Harry Hawk served up four regional burgers from around the nation.
We're doing something similar this year, but this time you get to choose which burgers will be served, with the top three vote-getters across Gothamist and A Hamburger Today/Serious Eats making the menu. Some are regional specialties, and some are original Water Taxi Beach creations. I'll get to the candidate burgers in a bit, but first the nitty-gritty details.
But before the details, can I tell you that later in the evening, Grandmaster Flash will be spinning at WTB? OK, the deets:
Date: Saturday, July 28 Time: 5 p.m. Place: Water Taxi Beach (map) Cost: $13.50 for 3 burgers Payment:Tickets are available through TicketWeb Important Details: Please be sure to bring your ID when you come; no one is permitted on the beach without an ID or an of-age legal guardian Quality Before Quantity: Because the griddle is small and we're cooking these burgers the right way, we're emphasizing quality. If last year's event is any indication, the lines will get long. But with good company, the wait seems to fly by Getting There: Water Taxis depart from East 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan on a varied schedule (visit nywatertaxi.com). Subway riders should take the No. 7 train to Vernon Avenue/Jackson. Walk along Vernon Avenue to Borden Avenue, turn right. Look for signs for Water Taxi Beach. For more travel options, visit the beach's site
Instead of four burgers, we're serving three this year. What will they be? Here are the candidates that you get to choose from:
The Motz Burger: A four-ounce fresh-not-frozen burger served with Schnäck sauce and pickles. This burger hails from Long Island City and was invented by burger expert and filmmaker George "Hamburger America" Motz.
The Onion Burger: Popular in El Reno, Oklahoma, the Onion Burger was born of frugality. Throw a half an onion on the griddle, add to that a ball of ground beef, and smash it all together with the back of a spatula. You've essentially extended your meat by mixing in onions. The onions caramelize as they cook embedded in the beef, giving you a sweet, crusty oniony patty.
The Pimento Burger:Pimento cheese is big across the South, usually as a spread eaten on celery stalks or as a filling between two pieces of white bread. But in Columbia, South Carolina, they use it as both cheese and condiment on the burgers. Pimento cheese, for all you Yankees here in New York City, is a mixture of grated cheddar, chopped pimento, mayo, hot sauce, and black pepper. (Horseradish, mustard, and Worcestershire sauce are three common options.)
The Guber Burger: We served this one at last year's bash, and it seemed to be a hit, so we're putting it on the ballot in 2007. Made locally famous by The Wheel Inn in Sedalia, Missouri, the guber burger features a heaping dollop of peanut butter applied to the burger right as the hot patty comes off the griddle.
The Nut Burger: George Motz discovered this candidate in while researching his upcoming burger book. It was, he said, "like eating sundae topping on a burger. It's coarsely ground peanuts mixed with mayo, topping a burger. It's great!" (Related:The Nut Burger on AHT.)
The Butter Burger: A regional delight originating in—where else?—Wisconsin, the Butter Burger takes a very liberal dosing of butter after coming off the griddle. Those of you who have visited the Midwest recently may have had one at the rapidly expanding Culver's chain, where it's a specialty. (Related: Video of Solly's Grille butter burgers)
The Hammmburger: A burger topped with Jubilat Polish slab bacon—essentially Canadian ham, hence the extra mmmeaty name of this burger. This one is the creation of Water Taxi Beach's Harry Hawk.
Vote now! Polls close Friday, July 20 at 6 p.m. One vote per person.
Special thanks to Six Apart, who have donated a keg of Orlio Common Ale for sponsoring the event.
Posted by Adam Kuban, October 13, 2006 at 11:10 AM
Daisy Martinez, host of the public television cooking show Daisy Cooks, recently served as a judge for the Sutter Home Build a Better Burger contest. If you want the lowdown on judging such a contest, click over to her site. A clip:
We each were served half of 10 burgers, and those burgers were separated into 2 classes: Alternative and Beef. The winner of the Alternative category would win $10,000 and the winner of the Beef category would win $50,000. As luck would have it, I was so busy tasting burgers that I didn’t photograph them, but the winner of the alternative burger was Elizabeth Bennett and her Opa! Burger, which featured flavors of the Mediterranean (lamb, feta, oregano, and the secret ingredient: 2 slices of soppresata!), and the winner of the beef burger was Camilla Saulsbury and her Born in Berkeley Burgers (showcasing lemon-grilled fennel and arugula-fig topping, teleme cheese, and crispy bacon). Not too shabby!
It's late, I'm tired and still not feeling right after last night's party, and I need to get to bed. I'll finish the wrap-up of the Gothamist-AHT QBQ Beach Burger Bash tomorrow night after I get home from work. Until then, there's plenty of reading at the following sites: Gothamist, Off the Broiler, Sound Bites. If I'm missing your site, e-mail me (adam [at] ahamburgertoday [dot] com) with your link, and I'll add it here. If you Flickr and you have any pix, why don't you tag them with "QBQ BBQ" and we'll link to those, too. And, yes, we know it technically wasn't a "BBQ," but for the sake of expediency and all ... -- The Management
The elements were against us yesterday, but that didn't stop an army of around 200 burgerfans from storming Water Taxi Beach by land and by water.
As advertised, the Gothamist-AHT QBQ Beach Burger Bash featured five different burgers over the course of four hours, with a screening of George Motz's "Hamburger America" thown in as a very special side order. Big thanks to Harry "Hey Chef" Hawk, proprietor of Harry's LIC at Water Taxi Beach; his main griddle man, "King" Juan Carlos; all the staff of Harry's; and Mr. Motz, who worked the griddle along with Harry and Juan Carlos. The staff kept us all in burgers and
First up was the elk burger. The patties for this burger were shipped in from Idaho, frozen. I had a small chunk of a friend's, saving my own four-burger allotment for the following rounds of meaty goodness. The elk burger was interesting -- gamy and dry and a bit tough, due to its leanness and, no doubt, frozen state. Now that I've sampled it, I could probably live without eating an elk burger again.
Next up was the Motz Burger, a hamburger built to Mr. Motz's own specifications and the platform that the following three burgers would be built on. The Motz (pronounced Moatz) is a four-ounce patty of beef ground earlier in the day served with a dollop of Schnäck Sauce (a secret blend of mustard, chipotle, tomato product, and some other stuff; recipe here). The Motz is on the everyday Water Taxi Beach menu and is available there with American cheese and tomato. For some reason they weren't adding cheese or tomato to the burger event version, but it was tasty nonetheless. As Mr. Motz put it, "It's so good you don't need it!" The Motz, like the rest of the fresh-beef burgers, starts as a four-ounce meatball dropped on a very hot griddle. After a couple minutes, the ball is smashed flat then flipped to finish cooking on the other side. Also like the rest of the burgers last night, the Motz was offered rare, medium, and well-done. I had a medium, which was perfectly cooked, wiht a juicy interior and slightly crunchy exterior, thanks to the superhot griddle.
Next up was the Guber Burger, based on the house special at the Wheel Inn Drive In in Sedalia, Missouri. As should be obvs from the photo (left), the Guber Burger is slathered with a heapin' helpin' of peanut butter.
Despite today's intermittent showers, the Gothamist-AHT QBQ Beach Burger Bash is still on. There are tent(s) on the beach to take shelter in, and, who knows, maybe we'll get lucky and all the clouds will blow over by 6 p.m.
Anyway, my advice is to bring rain gear with you for the commute to the beach.
When: Saturday, June 24, 6 p.m. Where: Water Taxi Beach; Long Island City, Queens [info] What: A party on the beach, in which noted hamburgerologists Harry Hawk (Schnack, Water Taxi Beach) and George Motz (director of burger biopic Hamburger America) cook up renditions of regional specialty burgers How Much? $9 for two (2) burgers of your choice; $16 for four (4). BUY TICKETS ONLINE HERE [via Ticketweb] Rain Date: There is no rain date. There will be a large party tent on the beach should it rain. So don't let inclement weather stop you.
* QBQ = Quality Before Quantity. While we want you to come hungry for great burgers, please note that Water Taxi Beach has only so much grill space and that, rather than serve you crap burgers fast, Harry and George are going to make sure each one is cooked to perfection.
A Hamburger Today is proud to announce our first food event. With warmer weather in the air and juicy summertime hamburgers on our minds, the event will be at Water Taxi Beach in Long Island City. Sand, a great view of Manhattan, and burgers -- how can you go wrong? The party, which takes place on Saturday, June 24, from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., has been dubbed the "QBQ BBQ Burger Bash at Water Taxi Beach" (QBQ = "Quality Before Quantity"). Tickets are priced at either $9 for 2 burgers or $16 for 4 burgers.
These are the different burgers available:
The Guber Burger: A Missouri specialty topped with hot, melted smooth peanut butter The Butter Burger: A Wisconsin fave served with a large dollop of soft, pure butter The Green-Chile Cheeseburger: Made with hot green chiles, indigenous to New Mexico The Motz Burger: Named for acclaimed hamburger documentarian George Motz, it’s the quintessential quarter-pound patty served on a white squishy bun with spectacular “Schnack” sauce, originated at the Brooklyn eatery of the same name Elk Burger: Elk meat from Lone Hawk Farms in Idaho served with Schnack sauce and tomato
Harry's will also have his regular menu available. It should be noted that having a ticket is substantially cheaper than buying the food a la cart and that those without tickets may not be able to try every burger. And please note that the event is Quality Before Quantity for a reason. Harry and crew have pointed out that, while you should come hungry, just be aware that they're going to take their time to cook the burgers properly -- not just zing them out half-ass. So you might have to wait as they griddle them up hot and fresh for you.
As a special bonus to the burger lovers in attendance, there will be a screening of George Motz's film Hamburger America at dusk. If that's not enough burger goodness for you, then I don't know what is. Here are all the details. We can't wait to see you there.
GOTHAMIST-A HAMBURGER TODAY BEACH BURGER PARTY When: 6 p.m., Saturday, June 24 Where: Water Taxi Beach in Long Island City, Queens (closest address is 2-03 Borden Ave Getting There: Water Taxis depart from East 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan on a varied schedule (visit nywatertaxi.com). Subway riders should take the No. 7 train to Vernon Avenue/Jackson. Walk along Vernon Avenue to Borden Avenue, turn right. Look for signs for Water Taxi Beach. For more travel options, visit the beach's site. Cost: $16 for any four burgers; $9 for any two burgers Getting Tickets: You can purchase tickets directly from ticketweb. You can also buy burgers without tickets, but ticketholders get first dibs.
Backstory: New Yorkers are insane. They'll wait in shitrageously long lines for cupcakes (Magnolia Bakery) and for burgers (Shake Shack). So this dude, Mitchell London, must have said, "Hmm ... I will create a restaurant to vacuum the bucks from meat junkies and sweet toothers alike!"
Genius.
Anyway, this place opened a short time ago, and Nichelle over at Cupcakes Take the Cake, the cupcake blog (don't laugh -- you're reading a burger blog), suggested a joint-blog venture.
So, long story short: Join us. I don't know what kind of response there will be, so get there early if you want to get a seat. I don't think the place takes reservations, and we don't have any kind of arrangement with it to get space, i.e., first come, first served and all that.
Hear ye, hear ye: The inaugural National Hamburger Festival will come to session August 12 to 13 in Akron, Ohio.
Events will include Best Burger (amateur and restaurant divisions), the Miss Hamburger Festival competition (rrrawwwrrr), and Bobbing for Burgers: "Pluck as many hamburgers [as possible] from a baby pool filled with ketchup in 3 minutes."
Perhaps most intriguing, though, to students of hamburger history are the Hamburger Hearings: "a mock trial featuring representatives from the four cities and families that claim to have invented the beloved Hamburger."
For the record, those cities and familes are: The Menches Bros. (Akron, Ohio), Hamburger Charlie (Seymour, Wisconsin), Fletcher Davis (Austin, Texas), and Louis Lassen (Louis' Lunch; New Haven, Connecticut).
Attention New York burger lovers: New York City's Burger Club group will be meeting at DuMont this Sunday. From the e-mail AHT just received:
It's Dumont time... after a successful and tasty meat eat at Diner, we are hitting our second Williams-burger at the original Dumont this Sunday May 7th... 2:30pm sharp.
Why the original and not the new Dumont Burger? We debated about that, and the main reason is the originals ability to accommodate a larger group easier (and they have outdoor seating, maybe we can get the tree house). Plus it's the original, and that's gotta be worth something, right?
However, neither one takes reservations... so that means if you are down with some burger action, BE THERE AT 2:30pm... at 2:30 I will be telling the hostess the number in our group, and they will only seat us if we're all there... if you're not there... you know the drill. They are only open from 11-3pm and 6pm-11 so we need to be ready for action.
The Burger Club is a group of NYC-based folks who hit up Gotham's best burger joints in what their leader, BurgerSeeker, calls "Meat Eats"
Warning: Nonburger content follows. But stick with us. This is for a good cause.
Of interest to our New York–based readers might be the upcoming Food and Wine Tasting Benefit. In its seventh year, the event is produced by Project by Project and raises money for ECPAT-USA. EC-Wha? you say? It's an organization that fights child prostitution, child porn, and child trafficking. Certainly a cause worth supporting. And eating and drinking to support it couldn't be easy enough.
The benefit is from 7 to 10 p.m., October 13th at the Puck Building at 295 Lafayette Street. Tickets are available here.
So why did we post earlier today about the history of hamburgers? Because we wanted to give readers a little insight into the confusing matter before pointing out that today in Seymour, Wisconsin, BurgerFest is going on as we, uh, type.
Seymour, as you read earlier, claims to be the birthplace of the hamburger, where in 1885 "Hamburger Charlie" Nagreen flattened the meatballs he was selling at the fair, stuck them between some bread, and named the resulting sandwich for the Hamburg steaks eaten by the area's German-immigrant population.
The fest includes a car show, a "bun run" for kids, the "world's largest Hamburger Parade," the unveiling of the Hamburger Charlie statue (right), a Hardee's Thickburger eating contest, and a "ketchup slide contest" (we can only imagine).
There's probably plenty of burgers to eat there, too.
I don't have much to say about the event, because I didn't take notes, didn't record it, and I was a bit nervous so can't remember many details about what we all talked about. Perhaps later in the day my fellow panelists and some of our fellow foodbloggers in attendance will chime in on their sites and I'll link.
We basically talked about the role of foodblogs in food media (were they a threat—ha!—to traditional media or a complementary source of info), why we started our respective blogs, what kept us blogging, which food writers we liked, and what other blogs we liked out there.
I felt I was a bit ineloquent at times and was told I was gesticulating too much, and I wanted to name a lot of fellow foodbloggers as daily reads but then fell flat and drew a blank, even though some of them were in the audience. Sorry, folks!
Just a reminder that tonight at the Makor Center, the editor in chief of this blog, Adam Kuban (that's me), will be speaking on the topic of foodblogs. I'll be on a panel with Alaina Browne of A Full Belly and Josh Friedland of The Food Section. Food writer and fellow culinary-site proprietor Andrea Strong will moderate.
The discussion, For the Main Course, a Blog, starts at 7:30 p.m. TIckets are $12 in advance (you can buy them through the Makor site; click the link above) or $15 at the door.
Special note to my friends and coworkers: Yes—feel free to attend. Why are you all asking whether I really want you there or not? If you can't make it, no biggie; I'm sure I've bored you all to tears already, talking about blogging, burgers, and pizza.
Angelenos who enjoy the early morning, bathroom-centric genius of Howard Stern, the markedly less-than-genius musings of Frosty, Heidi, and Frank (at least they crack themselves up), and the hardcore butch feminism of a perceptibly burger-inhaling Tom Leykis surely love what KLSX 97.1 FM is feeding them.
For the rest of you who shun the King of All Media's "Celebrity Game with Mike Walker" and who reserve your modesty on "Flash Fridays," KLSX is preparing for an invasion of the burger kind. Register now for Malibu Dan's Fatburger Friday Office Invasion. Lucky winners, of which there have been eight to date, watch helplessly and hungrily as Big Mike and the Fatburger crew bust their way into the winner's office, sporting hamburger-heavy lunches for 14 lucky coworkers.
Force feeding your peers with ground cow, fries, and ice-cream shakes with the help of Big Mike or Malibu Dan, or whoever the hell, is sure to bring you instant popularity among your esteemed colleagues, with the exception of that assistant who complains about being fat then always eats the most cake at those unavoidable office birthday parties. Seeing as we love the juicy largeness of a Rubenesque Fatburger, we only hope the bossman will turn a blind eye to our greasy fingers and drooling mouths when our sweatshop, er, office, gets the call.
WORDS BY SELTZERBOY .::. SPECIAL TO AHT | Wednesday night, this site's editor in chief and I finally caught up with Jim Leff, who decided to stop by (well, near) our place of business for a little chat at Coliseum Books. Good thing it wasn't the other way around, because the much-admired food sleuth does his business seemingly in every corner of the tri-state area.
What a treat to talk turkey (well, not exactly) with Mr. Leff, whose populist spirit for a better way of eating infused the room with endless possibilities for elevating the way we eat. Mr. Leff, who wears a hound mask to protect his identity, may well be the city's most offbeat food critic, a moniker he would likely shun—and who could blame him. The mental muscle behind Chowhound.com, he is more than just another guy with a palate and a pen. Mr. Leff is a careful observer of the many nuances involved in cooking, and treats it more like an art form than the science fiction to which it is customarily relegated. He looks beyond atmosphere and other Zagat niceties in favor of restaurateurs who pour their souls into their frying pans, whether they cook in star-bestowed kitchens of distinction or turn out seemingly impossible delights in out-of the way greasy spoon diners. In this world, nothing trumps eating well.
Just as Mr. Leff is no talking head, Chowhound is more than just a website. It is a movement for those determined to change the paradigm through which most restaurants are measured. It is a support group for those who can differentiate fresh from aged mozzarella, and an egalitarian network to promote the former. "Chowhound is an antidote," Mr. Leff said.
Mr. Leff was at the Midtown bookstore to plug The Chowhound’s Guide To The New York Tristate Area. (He didn't actually write the book, save the foreword, but helped to edit it based on countless postings to the eponymous website.) Admiration for Mr. Leff aside, one has to wonder if New York really needs another book chock-full of restaurant tips; any bookstore in town has several dozen of them on the shelves. But one perusal of the book will change your mind. What New York doesn't need are the dozens of other books on the market. The Chowhound's Guide offers a great starting point for anyone, regardless of cuisine preference or locale. Its main section is oddly alphabetized by pretty much anything: ethnic cuisine, neighborhood, landmark, even specific dishes; the back is indexed by restaurant names and neighborhoods.
Mr. Leff's way of thinking has long been an inspiration. More than the great food he has pointed us toward—I can't even count how many burgers I have eaten at Donovan's of Woodside and Molly's of Gramercy Park over the years, the latter of which I owe entirely to Mr. Leff's indispensable first book, The Eclectic Gourmet Guide to Greater New York. I asked Mr. Leff how we can win the burger battle when 95 percent of Americans learned about hamburgers through Burger King and the other 5 percent doesn't have the money to wage an equally effective marketing campaign. Ever the optimist, Mr. Leff said that we're not trying to put chain stores out of business; we're just trying to get the remaining 5 percent to spend its money wisely, never to settle for the corporate food chain.
Since the book isn't really his per se, Mr. Leff read but one segment from it. Listed under X for "eXtremely Important," it sounded more like a sermon in which our spiritual leader preached his shiny outlook, at one point, even making us raise our hands in the air to pledge an oath: "It's extremely important that we never settle for anything undelicious when there are so many geniuses, holdouts, and proud crafsmen investing hearts and souls in cooking edible treasure that can sate our deepest hankerings. Just venture a bit farther and care a bit more, and all occasions can be special ... and the good guys will win."
Seltzerboy is city editor at Slice, America's Favorite Pizza Weblog.
Speaking of the Makor Center, the editor in chief of this blog, Adam Kuban, will be, uh, speaking there, along with Alaina Browne of A Full Belly and Josh Friedland of The Food Section. Food writer and fellow culinary-site proprietor Andrea Strong will moderate.
The discussion, For the Main Course, a Blog, starts place at 7:30 p.m. June 16. The promo copy on the Makor site reads:
The next best thing to eating well is reading about good food. Hear a panel of the most up-to-date culinary connoisseurs, food bloggers, talk about the web of virtual foodies and how they stay cutting-edge (pun-intended!).
TIckets are $12 in advance (you can buy them through the Makor site; click the link above) or $15 at the door.
For those AHT readers who live in New York City, here's something for you: Burger biopic Hamburger America will be screened at Makor Center as part of its Food on Film Salon next Tuesday, May 24.
The film wil unspool at 7:30 p.m., followed by a post-screening discussion moderated by Gotham's own guru of meat, Mr. Cutlets.
Tickets are $15 and are available through the Makor site and probably at the door, we'd guess, provided it doesn't sell out first.
This event will take place at the Steinhardt Building, 35 West 67th Street (between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue).
SIDE ORDERS AHT reviews Hamburger America
For a while, Mr. Cutlets' site was AWOL. Looks like it's back, complete with the Mr. Cutlets theme song, some valuable info, and a link to buy his excellent book, Meat Me in Manhattan.
George Motz, author of 
Featuring such events as "Bobbing for Burgers." As the 
Daisy Martinez, host of the public television cooking show Daisy Cooks, recently served as a judge for the Sutter Home 
A Hamburger Today is proud to announce our first food event. With warmer weather in the air and juicy summertime hamburgers on our minds, the event will be at 
June 16.
Hear ye, hear ye: The inaugural 
Of interest to our New York–based readers might be the upcoming 
So, last night was the 
Angelenos who enjoy the early morning, bathroom-centric genius of 
