Suicide By Cheeseburger

A couple of weeks ago I set up a lunch with Norm at Tyler Florence’s new hot restaurant, Wayfare Tavern. It’s tough to beat Norm to a new hot place, but I had done it, having been there for lunch just after it opened. I had ordered Marrow Bones for the first time ever, and I was in love. Plus Tyler serves big fluffy popovers instead of bread, just like the PU Club and Locke Obers in Boston (assuming that it is still there – I haven’t eaten there since 1973.)

So here I was, at a great place with great comfort food on the menu, with my first opportunity to begin my burger journey. Too many temptations were on that menu, including the aforementioned marrow bones. But how could I make such a big deal about cheeseburgers and not have one the first time I had an opportunity? Plus, I’ve got a chance to be one of the first Wayfare Tavern burger reviewers in town.

I explained my plan and predicament to Norm, who immediately offered to be one of my wingmen. I was stuck, and so I ordered:

“WAYFARE BURGER “LE GRAND" - grass-fed proprietary grind, Mt. Tam cheese, roasted onion, smoked bacon & herbs, housemade brioche - $18." You can add a fried egg for 2 extra bucks. No thanks.

Eighteen bucks. Better be good. That’s a mountain of a price for chopped meat. That said, if you put something great in my mouth and belly, you can charge me anything you want. I’ll only put you down on price if it’s no good.

I know I swore I’d eat plain cheeseburgers, but I immediately realized that if a chef has designed a signature burger, you’ve got to eat it his way. Did you really think I was going to say no to bacon? Tyler says this is the ultimate burger – ok, show me. I was in Missouri last year. And so forget what I said about basic cheeseburgers – I’ll order that only if there isn’t a specialty.

I’m a big Tyler Florence fan. I’ve probably copied more Tyler Ultimate recipes than any other Food Network Show. I record his show regularly on my DVR. I generally find my first shot at his dish a bit lacking, and he’s a little too much in love with mayonnaise, but he always has good ideas, and as he says, he makes “beautiful, beautiful dishes.” He was there cooking the first time I was in the restaurant, but he was not there today. Hey, he’s a busy guy.

So I went ahead and ordered the burger, asking for a salad instead of fries. And for kicks, I ordered Tomato Bread Soup to start. Norm ordered calamari in lemon, chili, olive oil, garlic, parsley and breadcrumbs to start, and ordered his first ever Hangtown Fry as the main. I have never had one either.

I’m not here to review the restaurant, just the burger. That said, the Tomato Bread Soup was OK – the croutons were really good, the soup just OK and not hot enough. Norm liked everything about the calamari dish except the calamari, which were overcooked. The Hangtown Fry was ok, but the oysters in it were phenomenal. And the popovers were overcooked, a big disappointment. They were perfect the last time I was there. This did not stop us from having another popover, which were better, but not as good as the first trip there.

I learned a big lesson about this project right away. If I want to live through it, I’m not ordering anything to start. These top restaurants making big $18 hamburgers are making some filling food. The last thing I needed was something as rich as Tomato Bread Soup. And I definitely didn’t need an extra popover. Burgers, particularly with big buns and cheese and bacon are not just filling, but they are like setting cement. They get more and more filling for 30 minutes after you down one. From now on I’m going straight for the burger and if I’m somehow still hungry, it’s probably a sign I’m eating too much, but I’ll just order something extra, but I doubt that will happen much.

So the Wayfare Burger: in a word, spectacular, or to put it in Tyler language, a beautiful, beautiful burger.

It’s about a half pounder, but it’s fairly tall, so it does not completely fill out the soft brioche bun. It has a layer of the Cowgirl Creamery Mt. Tam cheese, some grilled red onions and is topped with a lot of bacon. There was some kind of aioli spread on the top bun. It’s over 7 hours later, and I’m still stuffed. Everything added something, but in the end, it was all about the meat. Connie said she read that the meat grind is a combination of meats, the only one Tyler will admit to is short ribs. The meat patties are formed with a little Fleur de Sel patted on the outside.

The meat was absolutely delicious. I gave a chunk of the meat to Norm to try, and after mmm’ing a bit, said it had a minerally flavor. I don’t exactly know what this means, and maybe after a couple of dozen more burgers with him I’ll get it. But he meant it as a complement, that the meat wasn’t sweet, and we think that this represented a great beef flavor enhanced by the sea salt. I could eat a bowl of that meat. I could hardly taste the bacon. Really. I was so focused on the beef. Every bite was great, and it was a perfect medium rare. I’m going to experiment with short ribs in my hamburger grind.

Now here is another thing I care about – I hate a messy burger. I usually cut the burger in half, but today I just picked it up (and it was BIG) and worked away at it. And it never got messy, never started falling apart. I think this a sign that knifing that burger in half is a stupid thing to do, which unbalances the burger and stuff starts falling out. I learned a lesson today.

There was no tomato on the plate, and other than my dressed salad (which was lousy), there was a single, sad piece of lettuce to put on the burger. I treated it as optional and passed. Good choice.

I’ve eaten a lot of preparatory burgers in my life, and as I’ve said I have some standards – Eddie Rickenbacker’s and Perry’s. This was better. This was the best one I’ve had – right to the top of the chart. I don’t care that it cost almost a Jackson. And as another Jackson (Samuel) said playing Jules in Pulp Fiction, “Ummmm, this IS a tasty burger!” (Hear that soundbite here.)

Tomorrow night – Paragon before the Giants and DBacks. I’m thinking I’ve got to find some kind of limit to cheeseburgers. Plus, they have that great roasted chicken. Back to back days looks like an omen for a short life. But what a way to go.

Grease Pig - My Inspiration

Since I wrote up my burger challenge yesterday, I've already added a couple of dozen places to the list. Some of them are places I've been, like Bill's Place and Bullshead and Joe's Cable Car and Mo's and John's Grill and Taylors' Refresher, which I'll go to after I'm well into this project.

Others are places I know about, but haven't been, like the Tee Off and Grubstake and Home and the Double Play.

I read that Sam's has a burger. That's going to be tough for me to order. Sam's makes perfect Petrale. Perfect. I love it. I always order it, and I rarely order it anywhere else because it's the reason to go to Sam's. It illustrates the problem in looking for the best burger in town while visiting an excellent restaurant. Why order a burger when you can get something you can't get elsewhere? I guess Sir Edmund Hillary got it right. (If you don't know what he said, well go google it.)

I saw someone mention Oola. There is another place I'm going to have a hard time ordering a burger. The BABI boys had our annual post season party there once, and I had the best pork ribs in town there. Unless you were there, I don't think you understand that I had these ribs. We ordered a few plates as an appetizer, and they were so good, we ordered some more plates. Then I ordered them as a main course. And when the waitress came around getting desert orders, I ordered more ribs. Really. They were beyond awesome. I guess I could sneak the burger in there between the ribs appetizer and the ribs desert.

And I've seen some lists with places I've never heard. O Izakaya Lounge in Japantown only serves a burger at dinner, but I'm not sure a plain cheeseburger is going to do it there. They've got some pretty cool dress ups there like maitake mushrooms and shishito peppers. This was recommended on a pretty good list published at Tablehopper.com (you can see the reviews here).

I never heard of Street Restaurant, which is on Polk on Russian Hill. It's a block from Polkers and a couple of blocks from The Bell Tower. I never heard of any of them. I think that's the part of Polk near the now defunct bar disgustingly named The White Swallow.

And there are places like Tony's Cable Car on Geary near Masonic. I'm embarrassed to admit I ate there once. I was hungry, it was there and it was open. I'm going to eat at lot of places on the list before I head back to that greasy spoon again.

I want to give it up for one of my great inspirations for this endeavor. There was a guy who was a regular at Henry's Hunan (there are a few locations, but I share Meatpies with the boys at the Natoma branch). That's Diana's Meatpie pictured at the top. Henry's is awesome. I admit I can't eat it hot (which is their normal), but the food tastes so good when made "mild" I just don't care to admit my lack of manliness on this point.

Anyway, this guy was so enamored with Henry's he decided to eat every single thing on the menu (with normal hotness - in fact, he sometimes added extra heat). And not just every thing on the menu - he ate them in order, from #1 to #78. He could not reorder anything until he completed his journey. And it was a journey - in fact, the blog is called "A journey through the menu at Henry's Hunan." He rated and described each dish. Here is a link to his site. Check it out.

I don't think I'll be able to do anything as cool as that site, but I'm looking forward to burger #1. Meanwhile, I'm owed 2 Meatpie lunches, so somewhere along the way I'll have to interrupt my hunt unless the Cosmos want to pick up 2 tabs for burgers on the list instead. I guess we could go to Oola's, which is fairly near there for ribs and burgers and more ribs. That said, it's hard to pass on a Meatpie.

Baseball and Burgers

Yesterday my buddy Will came into town for a friendly lunch. I didn’t have a lot of time, so I took him to some place close to the office and so new I was sure he hadn’t been there yet: Hubert Keller’s Burger Bar in Macy’s Union Square.

I’m working my way through the different meats they offer at Burger Bar (American Kobe yesterday, buffalo is next). Hubert makes a nice burger, and when you ask for medium rare, you get it that way. You can also build your own burger, and they have all sorts of stuff all the way to truffles to add and pay for. As an aside, I don’t find the fake Kobe worth the extra 6 bucks, but hey – you don’t know until you know.

I can’t stand an overcooked burger. I’m a big fan and long time patron of the Max’s chain (Sue and I actually ate at Max's Son, Dennis' first restaurant), but when you ask for a burger, they assume well done unless you request otherwise. Yucch. I guess they don’t like the liability of killing their customers, but even if you ask nicely for medium rare, you rarely see pink, let alone red in the meat.

This week Connie showed me an article online from 7x7 about the best burgers in San Francisco. They listed their ten favorites, and then they threw in 10 more. I’ve been tasting burgers all over town for years, and have decided that I’m going to add this as a regular subject of this space. Baseball and Burgers. Dolan, you're a genius. I think I’m just running out of things to say about baseball even with this great pennant race we’re watching right now, so I'll spice it up.

I love a good burger. The big problem is when you go to a great restaurant, do you really want to order a burger when they have other great things on the menu that aren’t so easy to make yourself? For example, I’m going with my pal Peter on Wednesday night to Paragon before the Giants’ game. I love Paragon, where they make some of the best comfort food in the City. I’m a guy who likes to taste different things on a menu, but at Paragon, I’ve only had two things: I ordered a burger once (pretty good), and every other time I have ordered the roast chicken. If you haven’t tried this roast chicken, you just don’t know what you’re missing. It’s a perfect dish. I’ve tried to emulate it, and I’m getting better, but I’m not there yet. So now that I’m committing myself to this burger analysis, do I really want to order a burger?

If you go to One Market, home of a supposedly great burger, do you want to order that? Or Zuni? Or Wayfare Tavern? Or Bar Tartine? Or Dottie’s? Rocco’s is on my list (see discussion below), but do I really want to order a burger when he’s really known for his Italian food? Kinda seems like a waste.

That said, as the owner of not one but two Nobel Prizes, I have to be committed to research on behalf of all humanity. It’s an obligation that comes with the hat. So I hereby dedicate myself to a burger by burger analysis of San Francisco burgers. I’ll try to post burger pictures.

And I’m going to focus on the basic cheeseburger with Cheddar. No blue cheese, no brie, and no bacon (god, I love a good bacon burger despite it’s less than kosher standard). Let’s taste the meat, the bun, the cheese, the veggies and the balance. Noah used to eat plain cheese pizza. I could never understand it, but he claimed you couldn’t taste the pizza if you loaded it up with lots of toppings.

I’ve made an initial list of 53 recommended burgers based on the 7x7 article (you can see it here) and the over 500 comments to a Michael Bauer article asking for the best burger places (you can see it here). I’ve had burgers at a few of them, including Zuni (7x7 top 10) and Perry’s and Burger Bar and Pearls and Mo’s (all listed by readers of the Bauer article). Plus as a member of the O Club, I've had their outdoor burger from the stand by the practice tees, which Herb Caen dubbed the best outdoor burger in SF. (I've had a lot of them!) I’ve also eaten at a number of the restaurants, but didn’t necessarily order a burger. Or maybe I did, but I can’t remember.

Right now, for me the gold standard is Eddie Rickenbacker’s on 2nd Street, with Perry’s a very close second. They both make a beautiful burger with a correct medium rare every time. I liked Zuni’s burger, but I think that silly roll is, well, silly. Bauer’s favorite is from Marlow on Townsend (pictured above). The 7x7 article favors Fish and Farm (though there has been a change of owner/chef recently).

Here is my initial list. This could get fattening. At least I’m leaving off the bacon.

Absinthe
Balboa Café
Bar Tartine
Barney's
Beale St. Bar
Belly Burger
Bix
Broken Record
Bushi-Tei
Campton Place
Chez Maman
Clement St. Bar & Grill
Crown Burgers
Darla's
Eastside West
Eos
Epic Roasthouse
Fish & Farm
Fog City Diner
Frankie's Bohemia Café
Frjtz Valencia (Hayes)
Frjtz Valencia (Valencia)
Hayes St. Grill
Hi-Dive
Hillstone
Jenny's Burger
Kezar Bar & Restaurant
Lark Creek Steak
Liverpool Lil's
Luna Park
Magnolia Brewery
Marlowe
Midi
Mission Beach Café
Namu
Nopa
One Market
Orson
Paragon
Polkers
Rocco's
Rosamunde
Serpentine
Slow Club
Spork
Spruce
The Bell Tower
The Connecticut Yankee
The Front Porch
The Pork Store
The Richmond
Zeitgeist
Zuni Café

I'm sure I'll drag some of my buddies along for this journey. If you have some ideas for places on the list, let me know. That said, I don't care about your opinion unless you go there with me.

The Greatest Honor

I have to note in a moment of candor that I was notified on Wednesday night by Olaf, King of Sweden, that I have won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Fantasy Football. I had previously won this most prestigious of awards in 1986 in recognition of my invention of the internet.

Here is the text of the letter from King Olaf which I received notifying me of this great honor:

Dear Mr. PEFACommish:

Congratulations! You have been awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Fantasy Football in recognition of your successful proof of "The Shitty Running Back Theory." All of the Nobel Prize Committee members were stunned by the daring execution of the riskiest approach to Fantasy Football we have ever seen. This is certainly not a strategy for the faint of heart. We suspect your approach will not prove as popular as the 2008 winning Tight End Theory.

I had hoped to be there to announce the award in person as I did for the Colonel, the Inventor of the Tight End Theory. the Colonel was kind enough to stop here last week on his way to Africa. We shared a fine meal of tea and maple-bacon donuts. He is a great man, and he looks wonderful in his hat, which he assures me he will be wearing on his safaris.

I am sorry I am not able to be there with you and the fine men of the P&E Football Association to share this moment together. My attendance last year was the highlight of my life. Well, to be honest, it was second to expelling the Nazis from my homeland in 1945.

Unfortunately, the world wide recession has hit my country hard. We could not afford the airfare to San Francisco. In fact, it is so bad, that we can't afford any new hats. This is probably why you won. You were the only nominee in 2009 to already have a hat. Let's be frank: your theory has got to be about the stupidest concept to ever win any league championship. I believe this says a lot about the quality of your competition. Please remember to invite me to your next poker game.

Things are so bad here that we could not even afford to send you a self-adhesive plaque for your hat. I am assured by our brilliant Swedish scientists that Scotch tape will work just fine.

Again, congratulations on becoming the first two time winner of the Nobel Prize. I look forward with curiosity and trepicdation to the implementation of your next successful theory of fantasy football.

Royally yours,

Oly

PS: We would have also awarded this prize to your partner Shemp, but as I said, we ran out of hats.