Posted by Ed Levine, December 29, 2007 at 9:04 AM
Awhile ago an ELE reader suggested I try the burger at Harriet's Kitchen. I finally got around to doing just that this past week, and now I have a new go-to delivery burger.
The Harriet's Kitchen regular ($7.75 with fries, half-pound cheeseburger (I wish it was smaller) was well-charred, juicy, and cooked exactly as I ordered it, medium-rare. That's no small feat for a delivered burger (delivered in twenty minutes, I might add). The fries were fresh, not frozen, properly salted, and twice-cooked, as all good fries are. Finally, the grilled onions were cooked through to a golden brown. Not caramelized, but damn good nonetheless. Thanks for the tip.
Harriet's Kitchen
Address: 502 Amsterdam Ave. (at 84th Street), New York, NY 10023
Phone: 212-721-0045
Free delivery on orders of $8 or more, between 70th and 96th Streets, between CPW and Riverside Drive.
Posted by Ed Levine, September 29, 2007 at 2:07 PM
Market Table, the new market-cum-restaurant from Little Owl's Joey Campanaro and Mike Price, is now open, and, based on one thoroughly enjoyable lunch shared with Serious Eats's Alaina Browne, is certainly worthy of attention. The burger, supposedly made with a mix of meat similar if not identical to the Shake Shack, is absolutely killer, though because it's charcoal-grilled and because its accompaniments—everything from the condiments, toppings, and bun—are completely different from Shake Shack's, you can't make a direct comparison.
Market Table's burger comes with gorgonzola cheese, bacon, and caramelized onions, which are the holy trinity of burger toppings, as far as I'm concerned. The house-made roll has just a little bit of crunch on the outside, and it may be the best hamburger bun in New York at the moment.
But there's something on a roll at Market Table that might be as good or better than the burger.
Continue reading »
Posted by Ed Levine, July 9, 2007 at 8:30 AM
Like many New Yorkers, I am constantly on the lookout for good brunch spots. On Sunday I discovered a great New York brunch at Telepan.
It's $28 for two courses plus an insanely good house-made bread basket that includes scones, coffee cake, and killer banana bread.
The sheep's milk ricotta blintzes are lighter than my grandmother's, who of course didn't use sheep's milk ricotta as her filling, anyway. The smoked brook trout was a leaning tower of house-smoked fish atop a blini smeared with sweet-onion sour cream. The Fallen Pancakes Soufflé were silos of featherlight pancake batter studded with brown-sugar bacon and huckleberry syrup.
Even the biscuits and gravy, served with house-made breakfast sausage and poached eggs, were simultaneously homey and sophisticated, a tough culinary balancing act that Telepan achieved with virtually every dish we sampled.
Of course, being the beef and bacon addict I am, I ordered chef-owner Bill Telepan's burger, which is as good a fancy-pants burger as there is to be found in the city. It's served with Nueske's bacon, cheddar cheese, a hillock of housemade pickles, terrific french fries, sourdough onion rings, and pickles. You won't have room for the unnecessary desserts, which cost extra anyway.
I discovered Ouest's great brunch a few months ago, and now that I have discovered Telepan's, I now have two Upper West Side brunch spots to frequent and recommend.
TELEPAN
Address: 72 West 69th Street, New York NY 10023 (b/n Central Park West and Columbus Avenue)
Phone: 212-580-4300
Website: telepan-ny.com
Posted by Ed Levine, April 26, 2007 at 8:17 AM
I like a lot of the food served at the restaurants at the Time Warner Center, but sometimes the collective pretentions of the restaurants there, Per Se, Masa, Bouchon Bakery, Porter House, get to me. How down to earth can any restaurant be when it's part of something described as "The Restaurant Collection"? Enter Landmarc, the uptown branch of the beloved family-friendly bastion of Frenchy comfort food in Tribeca. A casual, unpretentious, no reservations (for parties smaller than six) restaurant serving well-executed familiar food at reasonable prices would bring a welcome bit of fresh air to the "Collection," and based on one meal I had with my brother this week, that's just what Landmarc is delivering.
Mike and I arrived at 7:30 on Tuesday night, and we were immediately seated at a smallish table at what is actually a large restaurant seating 200 (plus a bunch of private dining rooms). Mike ordered the hangar steak medium rare, which came with fries, a salad, and a choice of sauce on the side (Mike chose the chimichurri). Knowing I was going to have to answer to Serious Eats Managing Editor and A Hamburger Today creator, Adam Kuban, I ordered a cheddar burger medium-rare, which also came with a salad and fries. Mike's hangar steak was beefy, beautifully charred, and arrived cooked as ordered. My burger had a great crust, but was medium at best. It came on a good toasted brioche bun that was just soft enough to easily absorb the meat juices. Of course a medium burger doesn't have much juice. Some housemade bread and butter pickles completed what would have been a great burger if it were a couple of ounces smaller and came to the table medium-rare.
The fries, obviously made from fresh potatoes, were good enough to eat but not to rave about. For dessert we shared some icy, too cold tangerine and apple sorbets from Il Laboratorio. They ended up coming to the table perched precariously on mini-sugar cones, a Landmarc practice that had migrated uptown. The mini-cones made the sorbets difficult to eat.
Landmarc adds a necessary, grounded, and welcome bit of "realness" to the "Restaurant Collection" at Time Warner. In fact, maybe it shouldn't be considered part of a collection at all. Let's just call it a restaurant, and a pretty good one at that.
Landmarc (Tribeca)
179 West Broadway
New York, NY 10013
212-343-3883
Landmarc (Time-Warner Center)
10 Columbus Circle 3rd fl.
New York, NY 10019
212-823-6123
Photographs courtesy Robyn Lee
Posted by Ed Levine, November 10, 2006 at 7:07 AM
The election is over, and we have gotten rid of quite a few turkeys. We have a new governor, Eliot Spitzer, and though he is a New Yorker he doesn't seem like he's the type of guy who cares about food. In fact I'd be willing to bet money (if Spitzer wouldn't throw me in jail for illegal gambling) that he's an "eat to live" kind of guy.
So I thought I'd give him a hand by offering him a list of five places to eat that might inject a little pleasure and fun into his life. The man looks like he could use all the help he can get in the fun department...
Continue reading »
Posted by Ed Levine, September 14, 2006 at 1:21 PM
Our friends at eater claim that the best burger in downtown nyc is at Lure Fish Bar. Is this possible?
Ed
Posted by Ed Levine, August 17, 2006 at 7:26 AM
Yesterday I posted my ten favorite fancy-pants burgers in New York City. They all cost more than ten bucks and aspire to hamburger greatness. They were:
1. Cafe D'Alsace
2. Telepan
3. Union Square Cafe (only available at lunch)
4. Spotted Pig
5. Cookshop
6. Country
7. Burger Bar at Grand Central
8. Nice Matin
9. Bar Americain
10. David Burke Sliders at Bloomingdale's
For addresses and phone numbers go to Menupages.
An ELE reader commended me on the list and mentioned Home's burger as one I should consider for the list. Adam Kuban, founder of A Hamburger Today, the nation's leading hamburger website, liked the list but wondered aloud about whether the fries should make a difference if what you're trying to judge is the burger.
Josh Ozersky, Mr. Cutlets, newly installed online Food Editor for New York Magazine and a serious burger maven, then weighed in with the force of twenty double quarter pounders with cheese. He said, and I quote, "The fact is Fancy Pants burgers are nearly indistinguishable...Eating them is just eating a meatloaf between two slices of obtrusive bread. All character in hamburgers exists in the lower realms, where the inside is an afterthought, and the surface speaks volumes."
Is Mr. Cutlets right when he suggests that fancy-pants burgers all suck?
Is any burger bigger than Shake Shack's doomed to failure? Do fries not matter? Is any roll other than a generic white bun a pretentious exercise in Foodiedom? Or is Josh a reverse burger snob, a purist who is ignoring the inherent deliciousness of a burger made with high-quality meat, cheese, bun and fries?
Posted by Ed Levine, August 16, 2006 at 7:57 AM
I don't know why, but lately I find myself eating fancy-pants burgers at every turn. Perhaps I'm coming under the influence of Adam Kuban, who really does order a hamburger in every restaurant that has one on the menu. Whatever the reason, I have discovered a handful of terrific fancy-pants burgers lately, enough so that if I updated my New York Times piece on burgers I would have a very different "best of" list.
Let's define our terms.
Qualities of a Fancy-Pants Burger
ound beef and ground beef only. Burgers with foie gras in them like the new Robuchon restaurant in the Four Seasons Hotel or the DB burger are burgers in name only. They
What is a fancy-pants burger? It's a burger that:
- Costs more than ten dollars and less than twenty.
- Comes with excellent french fries.
- Is served by a waiter in a comfortable, white tablecloth setting.
- Is made from fresh, high-quality ingredients.
Moreover, because it's so pricey every element of a fancy-pants burger must be nearly perfect. That is:
- The bun must be a high quality piece of bread either grilled or toasted.
- The cheese must be fully melted: no unmelted cheese blankets allowed.
- High quality, freshly ground meat with enough fat to make the burger moist, beefy and juicy.
- Lettuce must not be shredded and brown. Actually, lettuce should be banned from burgers, fancy-pants or otherwise.
- Onions should not be raw; they should be grilled, fried, and/or sauteed.
- Relish or pickles would in a perfect world be housemade.
- Should be cooked as ordered the first time around (this is really hard, but at the very least they should get it right the second time around).
- No mustard or mayo should be put on the burger unless they are specifically requested (see below).
A bad fancy-pants burger is cause for fury and revolt, because who wants to pay all that money for a lousy burger that comes off as a pretentious exercise in populist food.
Lastly, a fancy-pants burger must still be made from high quality, freshly grmay taste great (the DB burger most assuredly does; I haven't had the Robuchon creation yet), but they are serious dishes created by world-class chefs that have been inspired by true burgers.
Anyway, here's my list of the Top Ten Fancy-Pants Burgers in New York City:
Continue reading »
Posted by Ed Levine, July 24, 2006 at 10:34 AM
Kenny Shopsin complained bitterly to me a couple of weeks ago about the fact that no food writer had sampled his sliders, which he proclaimed to be the best in NYC. So last Friday I braved the sweltering heat and went down to Shopsin's for the sliders, which come three to an order accompanied by Shopsin's very good fries. Damned if Kenny wasn't right. His sliders were magnificent: each mini-burger had a crunchy exterior and was juicy inside, crunchy yet pliant fried onions were actually melded into the top of each slider, along with American cheese. The mini-potato buns were grilled and buttered, so they formed a snug holder for the burgers. The bad news is that Shopsin's is now closed for a month for vacation. But his movie "I Like Killing Flies" opens this Friday at the Cinema Village.
Posted by Ed Levine, July 6, 2006 at 10:04 PM
New York is full of hidden culinary and cultural treasures, and I guess that's one of the reasons many of us love the city. Take Long Island City's Water Taxi Beach, a two minute boat ride from the East River at 34th Street.
There the lovably eccentric and civic-minded Harry Hawk, one of the city's true gastronomic originals (he owns Schnack in Carroll Gardens and is a veritable hot dog and hamburger historian), has constructed a beach bar, complete with sand and picnic tables and a fantastic view of the city skyline. The setting alone is worth a trip there, but the fact that Harry is making great food there makes Water Taxi Beach an essential stop on any NYC burger and hot dog tour.
Schnack is making what he is calling a Motz Burger (named after burger auteur George Motz, producer and director of the world's greatest hamburger movie, Hamburger USA. The Motz burger is freshly ground chuck made on a super-hot griddle, so the burgers get that great char we all know and love at the Shake Shack. I actually went with Motz himself to have the burger tonight, and he was mightily offended when I ordered my Motz burger with cheese (Motz is a purist who disdains cheeseburgers). The burgers are just the right size, and though they overcooked my first one (I ordered it rare and it was medium), they immediately cooked another one for me that was perfect. The hot dog was also serious, topped with Coney Sauce (chili for the uninitiated).
Water Taxi Beach is worth a summer evening or weekend excursion any time you get the urge for a burger overlooking the water. Water Taxi Beach doesn't really have a street address. It is closest to 2-03 Borden Ave. Take the number 7 line to Vernon-Jackson. It's about an eight minute walk from there. Or take the two minute water taxi from 34th Street and the East River. The boat runs continuously on weekends, and up to about 8 p.m. on weekdays.
Posted by Ed Levine, May 5, 2006 at 3:37 PM
A burger from Shake Shack
My top five burgers in New York City:
Peter Luger, but only when they can figure out how to serve a burger medium-rare.
Shake Shack: I know it's a cliché, but nobody gets the bun-to-meat ratio right except these guys, and that salty crust is so damn fine.
Telepan: Chef Bill Telepan is now serving that great burger he perfected at the Judson Grill. Bonus: It comes with great sourdough onion rings.
Prime Burger: Tell them to make it from scratch, and don't waste any calories on the french fries. Have a piece of pie, instead. And dig the swiveling school desk tables for one.
The Good Fork: Great burger in Red Hook, but alas, only fair onion rings.
Honorable mentions: The Spotted Pig, Blue Smoke
Peter Luger
Address: 178 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY 11211 (map)
Phone: 718-387-7400
Website: peterluger.com
Shake Shack
Address: 10 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10010 (inside Madison Square Park; map)
Phone: 212-889-6600
Website: shakeshacknyc.com
Telepan
Address: 72 West 69th Street, New York, NY 10023 (b/n Columbus and Central Park West; map)
Phone: 212-580-4300
Website: telepan-ny.com
Prime Burger
Address: 5 East 51st Street, New York, NY 10022 (b/n Madison and 5th; map)
Phone: 212-759-4729
Website: primeburger.com
The Good Fork
Address: 391 Van Brunt Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231 (map)
Phone: 718-643-6636
Website: goodfork.com
Posted by Ed Levine, April 26, 2006 at 12:48 AM
Last Wednesday I finally made it out to Van Brunt Street, the center of the burgeoning hipster neighborhood Red Hook. There I met A Hamburger Today founder Adam Kuban, his trusty sidekick Matty, Schnack chef/owner Harry Hawk and his aide de burgercharge Juan Carlos , Mr. Cutlets himself, Josh Ozersky, and the hamburger auteur himself, the Truffaut of this burger-loving nation, Mr. George Motz.
Ozersky had convened a meeting of this burger murderer's row to sample the hamburger at The Good Fork, which he claimed to be in the top three in NYC. I had been tipped off to the Good Fork by NY Times Culture Editor and serious food maven Sam Sifton, who true to his Brooklyn roots, now calls Red Hook home.
Everyone but me ordered burgers for their main course. I figured I would get to taste somebody's burger at the table, so I ordered slow cooked Berkshire pork on a bed of polenta. We also ordered almost all the starters: excellent crabcakes, fine pork dumplings, hot but not crazy hot chicken wings, a clean-tasting but dull gumbo, great crispy sweetbreads, and fairly limp scallion pancakes.
Continue reading »
Posted by Ed Levine, April 8, 2006 at 12:16 PM
A reader correctly chastised me for not giving the address of the restaurant where I had the great fancy-pants burger. Country is at 90 Madison (SW corner of 29th Street) on the ground floor (you walk down a few stairs from the street entrance) of the Carlton Hotel. The burger is served at lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. seven days a week.
Posted by Ed Levine, April 7, 2006 at 12:18 PM
When you order a burger in a fancy-pants environment and it turns out to be great, it's a sure sign that the fancy-pants chef in charge of the kitchen loves a good burger as much as the rest of us. So the only conclusion I can draw after having a burger at Country is that the chef there, Doug Psaltis, has eaten his share of burgers once he takes off his toque and chef whites. The burger at Country is served on a homemade English muffin (it tasted like a brioche roll to me) with special sauce and French Fries Provencal. All pretensions aside, this burger is terrific. It has a properly charred and seared exterior and a wonderfully juicy and meaty interior. The special sauce is a fairly nondescript thousand island dressing that doesn't do much for the burger either way. The french fries provencal were just great french fries, crispy on the outside, soft and tender on the inside, with just the right amount of fancy-pants pimenton salt. The burger at Country is fifteen bucks without cheese, but it's a worthwhile plate of food. On the fancy-pants Burger scale, Country's burger gets a 9 out of 10. For more on burgers fancy-pants and otherwise check out my piece on burgers in the Times.
Posted by Ed Levine, April 2, 2006 at 12:23 PM
It was a gorgeous day in New York last Friday, so I ventured over to the Shake Shack, Danny Meyer and the Union Square Hospitality Group's burger and hot dog emporium in Madison Square Park (Madison Ave. and 23rd St.). The line was insanely long (about an hour from getting on line to eating), but my Shack Burger, made with American cheese, lettuce, tomato and some kind of Thousand Island dressing, was delicious, rare as ordered, with the Shake Shack's trademark salty, crusty exterior. The order-taker at the cash register had talked me out of my usual small vanilla frozen custard and steered me to the special flavor of the day, Coffee Brownie. I loved the coffee frozen custard, but the chunks of brownie were too big and too sweet. A Shake Shack source told me that morning they're already serving 900 burgers a day (it was only late March for Christ's sake), so lord only knows how long the line is going to be come summer. Check out the other early reports on Shake Shack from eater.curbed.com and ahamburgertoday.com
Posted by Ed Levine, March 23, 2006 at 12:45 PM
I had a great lunch at Keen's Chophouse today, and I was reminded what a cool place it is. It's a zillion years old, it's all old wood and glass, there are thousands of pipes hanging from the ceiling, and the food is really quite good if you stick to the basics. I had the sliced steak, which had the minerally tang of good prime dry-aged beef. It was just the right amount of red meat for lunch, it came with a salad with tangy Neals Yard Stilton crumbled over it (I special-ordered the cheese from out friendly waiter), and the iced tea refills were free. And burger freaks should note that Keen's bar serves a terrific hamburger with fresh french fries that would be perfect if they were saltier and fried a little longer so they would be golden brown instead of off-white. You can't get the burger in the main room at the restaurant. The sliced steak was only $22, and I wasn't paying anyway, so I would describe the prices at Keens as being quite reasonable. Keens is a perfect place to eat before an event at the Madison Square Garden. It's a five to seven minute walk from the The World's Greatest Arena.
