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bellastraniera
a.k.a. Marcy Swingle - obsessed with food and fashion.View my photography website.
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Tag Archives: burgers
Rockwell’s Express on 8th Street
Throwing their hat into the ever-expanding NYC burger ring is Rockwell’s Express, slated to open on East 8th Street in September in the old Rickshaw Dumpling space. A source on the commercial real estate side tells us that the burger shop, which has a full restaurant in Westchester, is a “fast-casual concept” with a service counter. Rockwell’s Express will offer delivery, but like Chipotle and Cafetasia across the street, they’re also hedging their bets with sit-down service and booze (most likely just beer and wine). (more…)
Prime Meats
What’s the magic formula for opening a restaurant in this economy? Old-timey décor and bartenders in handlebar mustaches and suspenders? Gourmet burgers on the menu? The people behind several successful inexpensive-but-charming restaurants at the helm?
Prime Meats, the new German-inflected Brooklyn restaurant by Frankie’s Spuntino owners Frank Castronovo and Frank Falcinelli, has doubled down on previous winning elements to come up with a seemingly foolproof recipe for success. And so far, everyone’s loving it: the wait for a table on an August weekday night was almost an hour. In the roomy bar area, the ceilings are pressed tin, Victorian brass lamps hang over the bar, and a vintage butcher shop mirror with “Prime Meats” etched on it reflects the grown-up, very Brooklyn crowd. (About three out of five men in the place had beards, including owner Frank Falcinelli, who was sitting in the corner.) Seeing this kind of steampunk setting yet again made us wonder if Freeman’s Taavo Somer and Milk & Honey’s Sasha Petraske are wringing their hands somewhere, wondering what they hath wrought. (more…)
More Burger Tips
The Resto Burger
As we head into the holiday weekend, the Times Dining section has a handy article on how to grill burgers. Some of the pointers, from 30 chefs with major burger cred, echo the ones in this earlier Gastro Chic article on what not to do when grilling burgers. Some are good new tips.
The final burger recipe is pretty unrealistic for a home chef, however, since it involves searing the burgers on a grill then finishing them in the oven. Most people’s outdoor grill is nowhere near their indoor oven. Also, I’ve noticed that guests tend to freak out if you abscond with a whole tray full of burgers. (more…)
Grilling Burgers: What Not to Do
The Minetta Tavern Burger - Do Not Attempt!
This hilarious bad review of RF O’Sullivan’s in Boston by A Hamburger Today reminded me: there are so many people that don’t know how to cook a burger. Why? Because it’s not as easy as it seems. Once you clear away several widely-held misconceptions, however, it gets a lot easier.
- Do not use any kind of “lean” ground beef. “Lean” ground chuck is to meat what Snackwells are to cookies: blasphemy. There’s no need to be afraid of the fat in regular ground chuck. When you are cooking the meat, the fat heats up and liquifies, running out of the burger and leaving a much airier texture behind. Lean meat, on the other hand, results in dense, less flavorful burgers. Remember: fat is the conduit of flavor.*
- Don’t buy gourmet buns. Gourmet rolls, as mentioned in this review, tend to be too crusty and hard for a sandwich. The bun should meld to the burger. You’re better off with regular old sesame seed buns. (more…)
Minetta Tavern
Finally! Minetta Tavern is open. Yes, that one, the place that’s been around for 72 years.
Amid all the buzz about Keith McNally’s new venture, there was always one thing that wasn’t clear. Why had he chosen this crusty old place as the next incarnation of McNallyism? If you’ve lived in New York long enough, you know the Minetta Tavern because you’ve walked by it–often solely for the purpose of getting away, fast. Once the intersection of cool and the setting for Serpico, MacDougal Street and Minetta Lane is now only the home of Cafe Wha? (and the underrated Bellavitae) and has gotten as touristy as it once was cool.
Of course, there are exceptions. 124 Rabbit Club opened up across the street, and before that, underground jazz den Bar Next Door. So maybe the writing was on the wall.
But as soon as you walk into Minetta Tavern, the answer is apparent. There’s an old school bar, murals and caricatures on the wall, the decor harkens back to an earlier age of the Village, and gorgeous Ralph Fiennes is sitting across from you. Is Minetta Tavern McNally’s answer to the Waverly Inn? Certainly McNally had an unlikely rival in Graydon Carter, who never so much as dabbled in restaurants before, then came in to gather up the celebs in one fell swoop.
If Minetta Tavern is the next chapter, McNally has come up on top. He’s wisely gotten away from Italian and back to his bistro roots, installing Riad Nasr of Balthazaar in the kitchen. The Pat LaFrieda burger (called the “Black Label Burger” on the menu) that has inspired so much worship appears here, and, as steak meat ground into burger form, it’s exactly right for the times. If we like to have our steak and eat it to, this is it – and yes, it’s all it’s cracked up to be.
The Dodd cocktail – a tasty mix of bourbon and absinthe. Also – the wines. There’s a great $9 Malbec that goes perfectly with the Black Label burger.
Mesclun salad with goat cheese.
This was quite tasty – and owed something to Jodi Williams, I thought. Stuffed calamari with salt cod, like a brandade. Delicious sauce and olives, too.
Comfort food alert: the Pommes Aligot.
The Minetta Burger – pretty darn good for a regular old cheeseburger.
Choux Farcis – stuffed cabbage.
The supposed Holy Grail of burgers, the Pat LaFrieda patty, was excellent. Really more like a ground steak than a burger, but we’re not complaining. For God’s sake, don’t you dare put ketchup on it.
The back dining room, definitely a little more chill and quiet than the front.
The bustling front room. It’s really hard to get in – literally – because of the log jam at the door. But the front of the house staff is very quick.
Caricatures on the wall.
Beautiful old bar (totally packed). There are lots of interesting little details like the mural of boxers (?) on top.
Looks quiet outside but wait until you get inside.
Old meets new? Minetta Tavern and Cafe Wha, two Village standbys.
Minetta Tavern
113 MacDougal Street, at Minetta Lane
New York, NY
212.475.3850
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Tagged American food, burgers, French food, Graydon Carter, Keith McNally, New York, restaurants
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Keens
Burger blowhards are everywhere these days. Just as every Ray’s Pizza calls itself “the original,” every place that can scoop together a handful of ground meat and throw it on a grill likes to call their burger “the best.”
After a disappointingly diminutive burger at Resto and a misfired one at Bar Marmont, I was getting ready to give up. A victim of false advertising, I actually believed Bar Marmont’s menu when it touted the restaurant’s own burger as a “darn good burger.” The presumptuousness in the name seems akin to Bruni’s pet peeve, wherein “eat” is interchangeable with “enjoy” in every waiter’s vocabulary. (“Are you done enjoying that?”) There’s also a fashion equivalent. A girl walking down Robertson Boulevard last month sported an outsize tee shirt that read “THIS IS WHY I’M HOT.” If you have to say so…
Then providence intervened in the form of Keens. High Maintenance, Fang Shui et al. ended up at Keens at the eleventh hour before a Bruce Springsteen show. The place was packed. We had no reservations. The maitre d’ was merciful. If we ordered quickly, we could be in and out of the wood paneled, clubby pub room before the Boss went on.
If you don’t know Keens, you’re most likely female. Nearly every male in a fifty mile radius has been to historic Keens over the last 100 years. Not only are they famous for their steaks, they’re also known as a prime bachelor party destination. The ceilings are decorated with hundreds of clay pipes of bachelors past, when the place was a major hangout spot for gentlemen and actresses like “Miss Keens” in the nude portrait above the bar.
Burgers can be wolfed down in a shorter time than steaks, so High Maintenance and I went for those. The “Lady Burger” is a sort of diet plate adaptation of the traditional burger, with no bun and sauteed potatoes instead of fries. This seemed interesting enough to try and showcased the meat itself, which had a deep, grassy flavor on par with aged sirloin, though it’s just prime beef chuck, very freshly ground.
High Maintenance wisely ordered the regular cheeseburger and fortunately only ate half of it, so that I took other half. Finally – a great burger. Both burger and bun had a nice char from the grill. Cheddar cheese was melted to an oozy glaze. Technically, the burger was slightly smaller than the bun, but it’s so juicy that once you sandwich it together with crisp lettuce, tomato and red onion and saw the whole thing in half, it all melds into a coherent circle. Best of all, there was nothing weird about it. Chef Bill Rodgers saw no need to substitute a regular bun with some kind of hardened brioche or swap out cheddar for herbed goat cheese. Nothing kills a good burger like creativity. Chefs should go as wild as they want with other American classics like meatloaf or even pancakes, but please leave burgers alone.
Other standout items on the Keens pub menu are the salty-sweet, plump oysters on the half shell, crisp, just slightly greasy fries, and the perfectly mixed martinis. This is one place that knows about kickin’ it old school.
With all the burger places and gastropubs opening, it’s easy to forget that steakhouses are an excellent source for burgers. The pub room at Keens is better than a go-to place before a show or game at Madison Square Garden – it should be on every carnivore’s must-eat list.
Keens Steakhouse
72 West 36th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues
New York, New York
212-947-3636
Bar Marmont
One last dispatch from LA.
Something momentous has happened in Hollywood, though many there don’t even realize just how big a deal it is. One of the chefs from the Spotted Pig, Carolynn Spence, who trained under April Bloomfield, has decamped to Bar Marmont. As any New Yorker who counts the Spotted Pig among her favorite restaurants could tell an Angeleno: this is huge.
Of course, when we walked into the bar, which admittedly is not as new and trendy as it once was, Fellow WASP wondered what we were doing there.
“What’s different?” She eyed the butterflies on the ceiling, the very same little butterflies that had been there before Andre Balazs’ renovations. Still, Bar Marmont has its gritty-underside-of-Hollywood charm. The proof would have to be in the food.
Everyone knows the stories about the booze- and drug-filled parties at Chateau Marmont, but now it seems Bar Marmont has taken to actually serving drugs, because their gougeres must be cut with crack. Otherwise there’s no way to explain why they were pounced upon like an illicit, jones-for substance that has to be quickly consumed before it’s confiscated. Granted, we had to wait over a half an hour for the gougeres to appear after ordering from our kinda spacey waitress in white go-go boots, but they were worth the wait. Piping hot, with a crisp exterior and fluffy within, these fancy cheese buns are a must-order. And they go beautifully with wine and cocktails.
The extensive menu is easier to navigate if you’ve learned a few tricks from the Spotted Pig. Boozy bacon prunes are a variation on the Spotted Pig’s Devils on Horseback, but without any pear within. I missed that contrast in texture, but we loved the sinfully candied taste of the boozy bacon prunes. Smoked trout with creme fraiche in potato crisps sounded like a reinterpretation of the Spotted Pig’s fabulously fishy roll mops, but Bar Marmont’s were comparatively meh. The ingredients just didn’t hang together as well, and the crisps weren’t crisp.
Perhaps even more illicit in LA than drugs are fried foods, especially in a respectable establishment like this one. It’s one thing to get caught in a late-night drunken drive-thru to In-N-Out burger a la Paris Hilton, quite another to order a host of fried things while completely in control of your senses. In this way, Bar Marmont brings something new to the LA dining scene: The food is both unhealthy but upscale in a land of either-or dining. The fried squid, a calamari-like crowd pleaser, is paired with a delicious horseradish cream sauce that way exceeds the culinary requirements of bar food. On the flip side, even the fish items are made with some kind of fatty thing like butter or chorizo.
After we decimated the fried squid, the entrees started to roll out. My friend the Agent had the herb-roasted chicken, which was probably made with equal parts butter and chicken. It was delicious. Crispy skin gave way to a very juicy interior. All it was missing was some kind of starchy side to absorb all that buttery sauce.
Mon Ami’s pork chop was herbally inflected and sweet, perhaps a little overdone, but you never know if a kitchen is cooking pork that way so as to avoid freaking people out. The corn fritters on the side were fantastic, light and barely glazed with honey. These seem to be purely Spence’s; they have no Spotted Pig precedent. 
Across the table Fellow WASP tried the rock shrimp po boy and pronounced it good. The rest of us had already had way too much fried squid to sample it.
There was only one thing wrong: my “damn good burger” didn’t come out with the rest of the entrees. It took several minutes and lots of flagging to retrieve Go Go Boots. The burger was going to “be right out.” Did the order even make it to the kitchen the first time around? Worse, when it finally did arrive, it wasn’t cooked correctly. The kitchen had rushed it off the grill, delivering it very rare instead of medium-rare. This violated a cardinal rule of service. If you’re going to mess up an order, mess it up only once, not twice.
When the dishes were cleared, we ordered coffee from a busboy. Several hours passed. I knit a sweater, while Mon Ami read War and Peace. Finally, Go Go Boots appeared. “No one told me about the coffee,” she said. By then we were dying from lack of caffeine.
Glitches notwithsanding, Fellow WASP said at the end that she now understood what was different about Bar Marmont: the food’s much better than it used to be. Something else was apparent by 11pm as well: the cooler-than-thou crowd that once left Bar Marmont for newer places has come back. Sometimes you can’t help but return to the scene of the crime.
Bar Marmont
8171 W. Sunset Boulevard at N. Crescent Heights Boulevard
Hollywood, California
323-650-0575
Resto
What happens when Frank Bruni leaves the building? Can a restaurant keep its standards high after a positive review, or do they just keep on gettin’ through the gettin’ through? Bruni knighted Resto a “terrific new restaurant” in mid-May. Since his rapturous descriptions of Resto’s hearty, meaty fare appeared at the beginning of a hot summer, Marie Fromage and I waited til fall-ish to sample it.
Resto sits on a quiet stretch of 29th Street, its simple, white-washed and wood-floored interior making it a bare bones but welcoming kind of place, with basic gastro pub decor that echoes the Half King’s on 23rd Street. Like the Half King, in the off hours it can be a good place for a beer and a conversation, but when it fills up, the uncarpeted space can get loud.
Of course, one of the main draws here is the lamb ribs. These were the highlight of Bruni’s review, and they were as much of a cholesterol-laden thrill as promised. Charred on the outside and tender within, rubbed in a Indian spice blend, they were just as meaty and fatty as any rib eater could handle. Served with a yogurt sauce alongside, they tasted like donner kebab elevated to gourmet status.
The Middle Eastern and Asian influences throughout this Belgian restaurant may seem odd, but they’re an accurate reflection of chef Ryan Skeen’s 5 Ninth training and of what European food is now, not a nostalgic view of what it was a couple decades ago. Though you may think of moules frites when you think of Belgium, shawarma is insanely popular there now.
Cuttlefish, which is closely related to squid, arrived in a salad special and provided a nice, lightly acidic counterpart to the meat dishes. Drizzled on the bottom of the plate was a romanesco sauce the Spanish joints in town have taught us to crave. We only wished there was more of it.
Whatever health benefits we gained with the light cuttlefish salad were immediately undercut by the deep fried crispy pork toast lurking under the deviled eggs. These were too heavy even by our fat-seeking standards and overwhelmed the relatively delicate taste of the eggs.
On the other hand, some items were not as indulgently fatty as previously reported. The staff kindly brought us the “tête de cochon” sandwich Bruni chronicled, though it is no longer on the menu. These little pork jowl sandwiches were also kind of “meh” for something dubbed “tête de cochon.” The ratio of meat to bread should be higher for true decadence. Shredded carrots seemed an odd touch, but according to Marie Fromage, carrots are used in almost everything German that requires vegetables.
Whatever the shortcomings of the appetizers, these nibbly bar snacks were better than the entrees, which disappointed after all the Bruni brouhaha. Moules frites with witte ale were nothing to write home about, and the burger was just too small. The burger circumference must be the same as or bigger than the bun; it’s a cardinal rule of burgers. Try serving anything smaller to a child and you’ll get a wail of discontent, which was what we felt. But the fries that came alongside were delicious, especially when dipped in the mayo with onion sauce.
This is not to say that Resto is not worth visiting. On a cool autumn night, there would be few things better than a pint of one of Resto’s many excellent and rare Belgian ales on tap, a platter of lamb ribs and a side of fries devoured at the underused bar. Just don’t come expecting nirvana, because apparently a good Bruni review can be a hard act to follow – especially for the restaurant.
Resto
111 E. 29th Street, between Park Avenue South and Lexington
New York, New York
212-947-3636
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Tagged American food, beer, burgers, gastropubs, New York, restaurants
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Benoît
If you can’t afford Alain Ducasse at the Plaza Athénée, there’s only one place to go: another Alain Ducasse restaurant. Fortunately for Ducasse fans, in the last few years the superchef has quietly amassed a mini empire of restaurants all over the world, not just by franchising his existing restaurants, but by gently taking over the classics and reinvigorating them.
One rainy Friday night in Paris, High Maintenance, Knucklehead, and I headed over to Benoît, a classic French bistro near the Centre Pompidou. Founded in 1912 by butcher Benoît Matray then handed down to his grandson, it was bought in 2005 by the Ducasse group, which installed chef David Rathgeber in the kitchen. Benoît still serves the kind of traditional French dishes that might even give Julia Child the heebie jeebies. Craving a head of veal? Look no further than Benoît.
After a brief foray into the tourist room, where we refused to sit down, the maître’d led us into the more acceptable side room with a sigh. Still, there was to be no sitting in the front room, which seemed to be reserved for regulars and was absolument complet, he said, using a phrase I’d already grown weary of.
Nevertheless, the ambiance here was perfect. Knucklehead and High Maintenance, who are regulars at Raoul’s in Soho, requested a classic bistro, and here was a bistro that reminded me of Raoul’s: a lively neighborhood place with a cool but casual atmosphere and good food.
Make that great food. If you want to go anywhere in Paris to get schooled in the classics, Benoît is the place to go. When all the riffs on French cuisine are whisked away, the standards that remain are excellent in their own right. Why do we have sear foie gras or put it on burgers when it can be an other-worldly experience on its own? With a texture like whipped butter, perfumed with a touch of shallot and a hint of champagne, Benoît’s foie gras was supremely rich yet airy.
Tongue of veal turned out to be a lot like salami in texture, though not as strong in taste. Thinly sliced and sandwiched between layers of foie gras, it was interesting, but you might as well just get the foie gras on its own, or the escargots, which are reputed to be excellent.
Look at this brown mass of cassoulet and imagine it’s one of the best things you’ve ever eaten. Not easy, right? The blah appearance of so much of traditional French cuisine – compared to the bright colors and flavors of Asian-influenced fusion cuisine – is what has set it by the wayside in the past decade or so. Judging this cassoulet by its brown cover would be a shame, though, because the taste is incredibly heady and complex. The secret seems to be in the sausage, which lends the beans an herbal spiciness. Or is it in the meat, which gives it gravitas? Or is it the incredibly low heat and long time it must have taken to cook beans this flavorful without making them fall apart? As anyone who’s ever made a cassoulet knows, it ain’t as easy as it looks. Benoît’s was hands-down the best cassoulet I’ve ever come across.
High Maintenance and Knucklehead both got the steak, as at Raoul’s, but unlike at Raoul’s, this steak was topped with what seemed to be sweetbreads – if I didn’t get lost in translation. The best thing about the dish was the divine demi-glace that came with, and the side of macaroni and cheese. Give a chef like David Rathgeber something as simple as mac ‘n’ cheese to make and even this turns out to be a goumet dish.
Knucklehead actually knows a thing or two about wines, so he chose this very nice Chateau Fonbadet 2000 Paulliac in anticipation of a trip to Bordeaux.
Heading into yet more traditional territory, we had a very satisfying order of profiteroles and cake for dessert. Somehow these taste all the better when served on bone china with sterling silver utensils, as at many of the better restaurants in Paris.
I found Benoît through the international boards on Chowhound.com, where many readers recommended it as the best classic bistro in Paris. It’s also in the Michelin guide with one star, meaning “a very good restaurant in its category.”
Doing one thing but doing it very well? Benoît’s stardom is well deserved.
Benoît
20, rue St. Martin
4eme
Paris, France
01-42-72-25-76
Posted in food, travel
Tagged burgers, French food, gastropubs, Paris, Paris restaurants, restaurants
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Decoding the In-N-Out Burger
Last but not least, no trip to LA would be complete without a trip to In-N-Out Burger. It was all I could do to restrain myself from getting one at the airport the second I deplaned. I waited to try this In-N-Out on Sunset.
Ah, the glamour! At least the red-and-white interior is clean and vaguely cheerful.
Dude ahead of me ordered a couple of the “Double-Double” – two double cheeseburgers. Now that’s a meal. I would have photographed the menu for you, but at this point the manager asked me to stop taking pictures. Notably, In-N-Out Burger was the only place in LA other than Fred Segal that banned photography.
Here it is: the Holy Grail of burgers.
Yes, it lives up to its rap, but not in the way you’d think. The burger itself is good, but it’s the whole package that wows. The lettuce, tomato, and onion are much fresher, crisper, and more voluminous than their East Coast counterparts. The soft, lightly griddled bun has a great hand-feel and sticks with the burger instead of sliding around or falling apart. I didn’t detect anything wildly special about the special sauce.
So what’s the secret? The onion. When you order an In-N-Out burger, always get it with onion when the counter person asks. It’s not the harsh-tasting yellow onion you might expect, but a thick slice of crunchy, faintly sweet white onion. If you cook, you know that there is a huge difference between different types of onions. White onions are the mildest and the best choice in raw preparations like guacamole. It’s the white onion’s delicate, sweet taste that sets the In-N-Out burger apart.
Some people are wild about the fries, but I thought they were only OK. For one thing, they weren’t hot enough.
But the burger reigns supreme in the fast food category. Will we ever be able to replicate In-N-Out’s magic here in New York? Unfortunately, even with the exact combination of ingredients, it’s unlikely that we’d ever reach the same caliber of California freshness.
7009 W. Sunset Boulevard, between Highland and La Brea
800-786-1000
800-786-1000
and many other locations, found here
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