Spread the bloody truth.

]]> http://thebutcherblog.com/burger-at-tiffanys/feed/ 0 http://thebutcherblog.com/burger-friday-future-burger-3d-attack-burger/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=burger-friday-future-burger-3d-attack-burger http://thebutcherblog.com/burger-friday-future-burger-3d-attack-burger/#comments Fri, 06 May 2011 19:31:27 +0000 Seymour Cutlets http://thebutcherblog.com/?p=1863 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; } It’s one of those spring Friday afternoons when the grill out back is calling our name and our thoughts have begun drifting towards burgers, cooked rare with a nice char on the outside. And a couple of burger videos have stoked our appetites over the past couple days. Eater has taken a decidedly futuristic approach [...]]]> #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; }

It’s one of those spring Friday afternoons when the grill out back is calling our name and our thoughts have begun drifting towards burgers, cooked rare with a nice char on the outside. And a couple of burger videos have stoked our appetites over the past couple days.

Eater has taken a decidedly futuristic approach to the burger with a creation from Dave Arnold, the Technical Director of the French Culinary Institute. The process involved to make the burger seems a bit closer to the process involved in manufacturing pharmaceuticals—”he fills a patty with a veal stock gelatin that liquifies when cooked”—but the end result makes us long for 2019. If you have the skills to be a recreational meth cooker, you might be ready to take a stab at this recipe.

Dave Arnold’s Burger Of The Future from Eater NY on Vimeo.

And some crazy French kids at the Supinfocom Arles (think MIT in France) have created Hambuster, a 6-minute, 3D video for their graduation project that imagines a world in which we don’t eat the burgers, the burgers eat us. Only the French could come up with such a sad, dystopian view of burger consumption.

Hambuster from Hambuster Team on Vimeo.

Fire up the grill—it’s Friday.

Somehow, we neglected to mark the passing of a giant. Not that we knew him, but he was literally a giant. Blair River, spokesman for The Heart Attack Grill in Phoenix, was, as you can see, 570 pounds of man, and as such he ate for free at the restaurant (folks over 350 lbs eat free).

This gives television news people the opportunity to do some “responsible” journalism. As absurd as the Heart Attack Grill is — if you are unfamiliar, diners wear hospital gowns are waited on by servers dressed as sexy nurses and the owner, Jon Basso, dresses as a doctor (not the sexy kind) — the newspeople act as if they are completely without guile, handwringing for more than six minutes over how the owner of The Heart Attack Grill has no moral compunction. Sure the good doctor is a little smug when he points out that he’s the only junk food purveyor who honestly labels his food and warns his customers — but he’s right, of course.

How on earth did they do that whole story and never acknowledge that McDonald’s et al are equally complicit? A typically finger-wagging Marion Nestle, author of “Food Politics”, typically takes the bait.  ”He’s deliberately trying to get people to eat more than they need,” she cries. Well, guess what, lady, so does Jamba Juice.

Nobody ever points this out. Though Basso tries.

When asked if he shoulders any share of the responsibility for River’s death, Basso replies: “An equal share with anybody who provided junk food to him.”

By the end of the piece Nightline lets us know they are in on the joke though (even after a whole, “Have you no conscience, sir” bit of grandstanding). They let the puns roll at the close, noting that the Basso is opening a location in Dallas, they quip “to spread his morbid message to an even bigger audience.” Ha, Nightline, you kill us.

Finally, here’s a musical tribute to River (who died of pneumonia, no doubt complicated by his weight):

Beastie Boys – Heart Attack Man (Live at SNL) by spike_a_157

Tour buses full of half-crocked suburbanites in bad khakis with cameras and shrill voices are one of the hazards of wine country. One you are going to have to get used to if you’re going to spend any time in the Napa Valley during the spring, summer or fall.

One of our favorite burger spots, Gott’s Roadside is Saint Helena, housed in a drive-up that dates back to the 1940s, has even taken the precaution of posting the sign that you see pictured above to ward of the demon scourge of these buses disgorging their contents in its establishment’s parking lot. That is until the sign abruptly disappeared.

Panic gripped us, and we wondered if there had been some sort of policy change at good old Gott’s. We asked on Twitter, if it could be so, only to be reassured that there was no such change and the reason the sign had gone missing only reinforced its necessity.

There are times when you are really in the zone — when you’ve got the mix just right. Like say when you have just the right drunk going off whiskey and beer and the joint doesn’t put you over the edge, but rather smoothes everything out just so. Think of your burger mixture this way.

Sure some fresh ground beef is your base layer, your beer if you will, but then you want to add in a little complexity. Folks go for everything from brisket to short rib. We like to reach for some lamb, which gives your backyard patty a bit of game (by which we mean the sort of gamey or earthier flavor some people find it imparts).

The levels vary, but you generally want to keep it weighted toward the ground beef side, using about half the amount of lamb as you do beef.

For extra credit hand-chop the lamb. Pick up some cubes of lamb, such as you might use for a stew or put on skewers. Using a very sharp knife cut this into strips longways and then across into strips the other way. Chop it up very well as you might a tartare until you have ground lamb.

We keep it simple, mixing with a minced clove of garlic, the ground beef, salt and pepper to taste and enough olive oil to keep everything moist. We find this keeps us on even keel.

What are some other tried-and-true mixes?

In DC you have the seat of power. And you have the K Street corridor, where influence resides. But if you want a decent bite you are going to have to go further north. With a few notable exceptions (and the anomaly of Georgetown), food foraging takes place in the narrow but fertile area between Dupont Circle and Adams Morgan, including, of course, U Street.

Typical of DC humor, somebody thought it would be hilarious to call a Dupont Circle burger joint Rouge States Burgers. Funny, until hegemony struck in the form of a peeved white shoe law firm above the place.

The law firm Steptoe and Johnson claimed Rouge States was invading its airspace. And fired at the patty purveyor in court, taking it down with the first salvo.

Claiming the burger shop was a nuisance, something that causes “substantial and unreasonable interference,” Steptoe sued Rogue States in DC superior court. And down crashed the tin-pot burger king. The judge effectively ordered it closed immediately.

The blog Above the Law points out that judge in the case made a specific effort to preempt the inevitable cries of “Big Bad Lawyers v. Innocent Little Burger People” when he wrote:

“[This case] was not about anyone trying to run a small establishment out of business, nor is it about a small business that does not care about its neighbors. It’s about the nuisance that interferes with the use, comfort, and enjoyment of [Steptoe’s] place of business.”

However, he’s, um, like a part of big bad law. So, we’re still going to caution you to check out the upstairs neighbors before firing up the frialator.

There’s much misinformation about grain- vs. grass-fed beef. Lately we’ve even been faced with the startling and confusing “vegetarian-fed” beef of Steak Shoppe. Which makes one think that Steak Shoppe has a zombie army of cannibalistic steers somewhere, gnashing their sharp canines and incisors and advancing in a threatening wave. OK, so fine, that story has been told before, except with mutton:

The point, dear reader, is that an awful lot of people know so little about where the meat they tear into around barbecues each weekend comes from that they just cling to catchphrases and buzz words to guide them. Dickson’s and the Eat Meaty crew have come to their rescue. And in doing so, they answer the eternal question: What are you grilling this weekend?

Dickson’s is offering a special that says basically, in the words of Sy Syms, an educated consumer is their best customer. And in this thinking the Chelsea Market-based meat shop offers its grand special for the uniformed and indecisive. In a battle for the ages it’s the Grass-Finished vs. Grain-Finished Burger Bash.

For $70 you get to take the Pepsi Challenge this weekend with enough fresh ground beef to make 20-30 burgers. The bash includes:

• 5lbs of dry aged Grass-Fed Ground Beef from Herondale Farm (in 2.5# packages)
• 5lbs of dry aged Pasture Raised, Grain Finished Ground Beef Wrighteous Organics (in 2.5# packages)

Not only do you get the beef, but you get a whole bunch of knowledge about your food and information about the small-scale suppliers Dickson’s uses. They’re out to change the bad name that grain-fed beef has gotten since being associated with factory farming and agribusiness. The biggest issue here are the farming practices, use of hormones and antibiotics and how the animals are cared for.

So, no, kids, grass-fed beef isn’t necessarily “green” or better and grain-fed isn’t necessarily evil. There are taste differences to be sure, and, after you fire up the grill this weekend and sample each type of burger you’ll know the differences for yourself and can decide which you prefer. Or you can just keep getting both.

And watch out for the killer sheep.

As we head into mid-June there is a bloody burger battle to end all ground meat wars brewing in Sag Harbor.

Bay Burger must be marshaling its strength to take on the invaders from the west.

First, opening as soon as this weekend is La Maison, a new French bistro resurrecting the former JLX space, which lay criminally fallow all season last summer. It’s in a great location at the end of Main St. right on the bay, and the interior, which the team from Trata who have taken over the place barely touched, is one of the few things that Ed “Jean Luc” Kleefield ever got right. Currently planned for lunch only is their American Imperial Kobe Burger, which may seem like a battleship facing a dingy when it faces off with Bay Burger, but we’ve yet to see this monster.

And coming in from further west is chef Laurent Touroundel who has been doing the chef’s equivalent of house hunting in the Hamptons. His LT Burger in the Harbor is slated to open in late June or early July. It’s a big month for former Jean Luc places, as LT takes over the space formerly housing JL’s Mumbo Gumbo monstrosity and more recently, his Grappa. It’ll be nice to have a genuine Frenchman in the space. Touroundel has split from his BLT Restaurant Group to work on side projects, so this will not be a BLT Burger, but a separate and independent burger boite from LT.

Chef Erik Blauberg is the restaurant fixer. Like the Wolf in Pulp Fiction, he comes in (right into the kitchen — “I’m not in an office all day. I’m in the trenches,” he told the Daily News in 2008) when things fall apart. For a restaurant, that means empty tables.

Blauberg, who was formerly the executive chef at Manhattan’s 21 Club, has one strategy (besides “streamlining” the staff, which would shock no one) that might surprise: veganism. He adds vegan and vegetarian items to a menu based on the assumption that there are so-so-called Veto Vegetarians out there. When a vegetarian is eating out with us carnivores, goes the theory, the group will not eat at a restaurant that doesn’t offer meatless, (and, yes, even vegan options), costing the restaurant the business of the entire party.

Blauberg tells Plate magazine, in the June edition, about two long-running New York City restaurants he was recently charged with resuscitating. “If you put a vegan item on the menu,” Blauberg told Plate, “It will outsell a regular item.”

Now, while we’re not quite sure we’d follow that as a universal truth, Blauberg reports that at one of the restaurants, “We launched the new menu, and the first night we sold 60 or 70 vegan options.”

And at the other buckling boite, Blauberg advised putting a vegan burger on the menu to complement the Kobe burger. “Most of the time the vegan burger outsells the Kobe burger,” Blauberg says. “They sell 100 to 150 vegan burgers a night. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Of course, one reason might be that his vegan burger has a menu price of $15. Now, we’re not sure what the Kobe burger costs at the place because restaurants who call in Blauberg don’t exactly advertise that they needed the Wolf, but rest assured it probably ain’t $15 bucks. We have Side Dish investigating and will report back when we uncover this mystery omnivore’s delight.

And for the record: Give us a nice ground chuck and we are fine.

We are looking forward to the flesh on display this summer at Mountauk newcomer Navy Beach. We refer, of course, to its burger, which is building buzz in early previews. Franklin Ferguson, the spot’s GM and a partner, tells us the burger was actually cause for consternation. “The burger!” he told as the place was finishing up previews. “I don’t know what to do with the burger. It’s so good. We spent more time on that than any other menu item — on all the other menu items combined. It’s a debate between my partner, myself and the chef every time we sit down. Finally we just put on two burgers.”

One burger on the preview menu, the Navy Burger, is a blend of chuck, short rib and brisket from Cromer’s done in-house, and has all the fixins, topped with Cabot cheddar and a bacon marmalade of the chef’s creation.  “When you put everything together you can do it with a beer; you can do it with champagne. Because of the salty and the sweetness in the marmalade it works with champagne,” says Ferguson, who has a sommelier background. The second burger, the Traditional was dropped after previews, after everyone seemed to like the Navy so much (and order it more).

Price has been a sticking point with all the haute burgers these days, and Ferguson says the team tried to strike a balance. He knows all too well that sticker shock can lead to buyer’s remorse. “We didn’t know what to do with the price point: some people are doing like a $10 burger that’s a patty and some processed cheese. Other places are doing like an $18 burger, which is sometimes piss-poor and you’re like ‘This is a $20 burger?‘”

The all-out Navy Burger comes in at $15, and meatball sliders on the bar menu are $9.